http://www.gazeta.ru/column/gevorkyan/3395412.shtml
gazeta.ru
authors
natalia gevorkyan
A twisted reality
— 7.07.10 18:27 —4900 Canadian dollars for Mutko’s breakfasts — a trifle. Not because he is otherwiseall warm and fuzzy, but because others steal in the millions. The network of Russianspies, about whom we will naturally learn everything at the end of the day not from ourown press, but from the foreign one, — is a great achievement of Russian intelligence.The custom-ordered film about Lukashenko [
sic
] — well, just what is there in it thathasn’t already been said and written about “big daddy”?I am not speaking about events and personages here, but about our – yours and mine – perception of what is taking place around us. This is already not the first year that Ihave been thinking about whether one can live inside a twisted reality and not gettwisted by it oneself.Tell me, at what moment did we stop being amazed by a declaration of incomes of amember of the Federation Council, for example, that includes a private airplane? Canyou even explain why one would list a private airplane as one’s own personalproperty? What’s the sense in this? List a car as company property, but a plane asyour own? What is this? At what moment did we start to talk about governmentofficials who have lost all sense of proportion, about bribes in the millions, aboutkickbacks approaching 100 percent as something natural, an integral part of our realitytoday? Since when has the fact that a government official spent only four figures atour expense, and not six, stopped being a big deal. When did we accept it as anaxiom that those who rule over us, by our will among others’, that people like that —can be bought, are greedy, get rich in the government service, successfully convertingpower into money. Why has such a reality, created by them for themselves, becomeOUR inevitable destiny.In France, government officials who allowed themselves Cuban cigars for a significantsum at the expense of the taxpayers or who leased an airplane in order to fly todiscuss the hard lot of the Haitians have submitted their resignations. PresidentSarkozy is going to explain himself publicly to the voters concerning a suspectedacceptance of 150 thousand euros in cash for an electoral campaign. There are allkinds of government officials and all kinds of presidents beyond the boundaries of ourlovely motherland too. But there they have society, which has an opinion, has aperfectly healthy view of what’s going on ,and of the power in particular. And it isprecisely this society, and not the personal qualities of this or the other person inpower, that upholds the norm in society and does not allow reality to get twisted. Inplaces where reality gets twisted, dictators appear who get 100 percent of the votes infake elections.It doesn’t get twisted in one day, after all, this same reality. This takes place gradually. You think the masters of simulating thereality they needed didn’t understand what they were doing when they were picking off the privately owned NTV and “shutting down”Khodorkovsky? You think only you and I read Orwell? And you know what happens with the years? A supposedly completelynormal journalist with democratic convictions, for example, starts to sing a song about the great operation by Russian intelligence toplant a deep-cover Russian illegal spy network in America. But you read the indictment against them and literally fall off your chairas you realise the complete amateurishness of these great spies. And you even wish that this were not a great SVR network, butsome kind of private money laundering operation, so it wouldn’t hurt so excruciatingly much to think about your money and mine
Natalia Gevorkyan –
Observer for «Gazeta.Ru»
being wasted on antediluvian methods of struggle with the main ideological opponent who is now becoming our gentle friend. ArielCohen said it brilliantly, by the way: “It’s just that they reset relations, but forgot to warn the spies about it”.But the journalist sounds like a true patriot. And someone clever, I would even say quick-witted, uttered the PR spin-story about thegreat “Operation Yasenevo”, exclusively in a private conversation, of course. So that the patriotic element would ring out first andforemost, front and centre, after which even words about the “grand fiasco” sound practically like the Russian national anthem beingplayed over untimely-departed heroes.Living in a twisted reality, we don’t even notice at what moment we lose ordinary common sense. And that’s the whole point.Twisted reality accustoms one to clichés. Like “Russia is rising up from its knees”. You gradually stop pausing to think even aboutthe meaning of these words. Cliché triumphs over reason. You don’t need details, your own fact-finding inquiries. The greatoperation — this is a cliché. Questions about archaic intelligence-gathering methods in a modern computerised world where findingthe person whose name is in a fake passport poses absolutely no difficulty at all, — this is details. A country needs to be proud ofits heroes, about whom president Medvedev, I hope, found out from his own special services, and not from his colleague Obama.This is our beauty Chapman, and no amount of taxpayers’ money is too much to spend on her, because just a little bit more — andshe would have managed to get to some prime minister, or president, or prince someplace, and we would have collected thedividends.The person who is thinking up the template about the great operation by Russian intelligence is taking the audience’s clichédperception into account. When a minister laughs on account of a trifle of several thousand dollars that he allowed himself to spendon breakfasts, he is also taking into account the order of magnitude of the numbers that don’t rattle the consciousness of theaudience, because it has been acclimatised not to react to numbers even more significant than this. When we say “ONLY threedied” during a bombing somewhere in the North Caucasus, this signifies that they have acclimatised us to blood and to the order ofmagnitude of the numbers.And journalists live in this twisted reality. And their reactions change. Something that would have evoked laughter 10 years ago, orindignation, or a host of questions, or wild investigative-journalistic activity, today comes down to giving voice to the poppycock ofthe creators of the twisted reality. As if the dear old Soviet Union had never existed, in which we all had already gone through allthis thanks to the efforts of those very same creators of reality (well, or slightly more clever ones).Don’t even bother re-reading Orwell’s “1984”; just watch the English film of it again. And, perhaps, in five minutes of hatred on thescreen you will catch your own reaction to the film about Lukashenka as performed on NTV. It is of no interest to talk about theauthors of the film. But about colleagues, who say: what is there to be outraged about here, there’s nothing new that we didn’talready know about “big daddy”, and here the demschizos
1
are all outraged now, as if they haven’t written the same thingsthemselves.Well yes, they removed one cliché and replaced it with another. He used to be our own son-of-a-bitch, but now he’s not ours anymore, and he’s even a bit of a fascist at that. And the audience gasped. And everybody’s talking about “big daddy”. Hello, this isn’tabout “big daddy”, this is about our own, totally home-grown, creators of twisted reality. About those who picked off NTV in orderthat, years later, they could place a custom order with this channel to engage in brainwashing. Ah, the irony of fate! “Big daddy”hasn’t changed, after all. Just yesterday our power loved him passionately. But you can put a diametrically opposite text under oneand the same photo or one or the same movie still. And you no longer have the lovable Labrador retriever between the shiny bootsof Putin and Lukashenko, chummily reclining in armchairs in sunny Sochi. Now a brown shadow lies on the forehead of the dictatorfrom a neighbouring country. The journalist diligently pastes together the custom-ordered product. The audience bursts out with ashout: “Shame, Lukashenko!”When my colleague says we did not learn anything new about “big daddy” from this film, he honestly doesn’t understand what ishappening. Or does he genuinely believe that any methods are acceptable relative to the son-of-a-bitch? And yet this samecolleague is completely rationally prepared to be outraged when they make the same kind of film about Saakashvili or aboutKhodorkovsky. Sometimes even by the very same authors. Because he personally does not regard these two as sons-of-bitches.But the methods are the same, aren’t they? Just yesterday he would still have been outraged by NTV’s heavy-handed propaganda,but today he is ready to only be outraged by it selectively.And this is the twisting of reality, which achieves objectives. People lose the appropriate response. Black no longer seems to beblack to us. What is frightening stops being frightening. What is funny stops being funny. What is shameful becomes the norm.Readers of
Vedomosti
stop being outraged by the modest misappropriations of an inefficient minister. Decent journalists stand withtheir mouths open wide to make it easier to feed them all kinds of tommyrot, which they then broadcast to the audience. Theaudience, after nearly a decade of non-stop telelobotomy, is ready to hate whomever it is told to hate, and to love whomever it iswilled to love. We have become an odd country indeed, with which the creators of the twisted reality can do whatever they please.And they do.
1
demschizos – The Russian neologism
demshiza
, which combines “democrat” and “schizophrenic”, is a highly derogatory term for radicalsupporters of democratic reform whom everybody else regards as hysterical fanatics, sometimes used as a blanket description for anybody who isin opposition to the power.—
Trans.
http://www.gazeta.ru/column/gevorkyan/3395412.shtml
Искривленная
реальность
— 7.07.10 18:27 —4900
канадских
долларов
на
завтраки
Мутко
―
ерунда
.
Не
потому
,
что
он
иначе
белый
и
пушистый
,
а
потому
,
что
другие
воруют
миллионами
.
Сеть
российских
шпионов
,
о
которых
нам
,
разумеется
,
в
конце
концов
все
расскажет
не
наша
,
а
иностранная
пресса
,
―
великое
достижение
российской
разведки
.
Заказной
фильм
о
Лукашенко
―
ну
и
что
там
такого
,
чего
бы
не
писали
и
не
говорили
о
«
батьке
»?
Я
сейчас
говорю
даже
не
о
событиях
и
персонажах
.
А
о
нашем
с
вами
восприятии
происходящего
.
Я
уже
не
первый
год
думаю
о
том
,
можно
ли
жить
в
искривленной
реальности
и
не
искривиться
под
нее
самому
?
Скажите
мне
,
в
какой
момент
нас
перестала
удивлять
декларация
о
доходах
члена
Совета
федерации
,
например
,
в
которую
вписан
личный
самолет
?
Вы
вообще
можете
объяснить
,
зачем
записывать
на
себя
личный
самолет
?
Какой
в
этом
смысл
?
Машину
записывать
на
компанию
,
а
самолет
на
себя
?
Это
что
?
В
какой
момент
мы
стали
говорить
об
оборзевших
чиновниках
,
о
миллионных
взятках
,
о
доходящих
до
100
процентов
откатах
как
о
чем
-
то
естественном
,
неотъемлемом
в
нашей
сегодняшней
реальности
?
Когда
трата
чиновником
четырехзначной
,
а
не
шестизначной
цифры
за
наш
счет
стала
не
big deal.
Когда
мы
приняли
как
аксиому
,
что
те
,
кто
нами
управляет
,
по
нашей
в
том
числе
воле
,
вот
такие
―
продажные
,
жадные
,
богатеющие
на
государственной
службе
,
успешно
конвертирующие
власть
в
деньги
.
Почему
созданная
ими
для
себя
вот
такая
реальность
стала
НАШЕЙ
неизбежностью
.
Во
Франции
подали
в
отставку
чиновники
,
позволившие
себе
кубинские
сигары
на
значительную
сумму
за
счет
налогоплательщиков
или
арендовавшие
самолет
,
чтобы
полететь
обсудить
тяжелую
долю
гаитян
.
Президент
Саркози
будет
публично
объясняться
с
избирателями
по
подозрению
в
принятии
налом
150
тысяч
евро
на
избирательную
кампанию
.
За
пределами
нашей
прекрасной
родины
тоже
бывают
разные
чиновники
и
разные
президенты
.
Но
там
есть
общество
,
у
которого
есть
мнение
,
есть
вполне
здоровый
взгляд
на
происходящее
и
на
власть
,
в
частности
.
И
именно
оно
,
а
не
личные
качества
того
или
иного
человека
во
власти
,
поддерживает
норму
в
обществе
и
не
позволяет
реальности
искривиться
.
Там
,
где
реальность
искривляется
,
появляются
диктаторы
,
получающие
100
процентов
голосов
на
фальшивых
выборах
.
Она
ведь
не
искривляется
в
один
день
,
эта
самая
реальность
.
Это
происходит
постепенно
.
Вы
думаете
,
мастера
моделирования
нужной
им
реальности
не
понимали
,
что
они
делают
,
когда
отбирали
частное
НТВ
и
«
закрывали
»
Ходорковского
?
Вы
думаете
,
только
мы
с
вами
читаем
Оруэлла
?
И
с
годами
происходит
,
знаете
,
что
?
Вполне
вроде
бы
нормальный
и
с
демократическими
убеждениями
журналист
,
например
,
начинает
петь
песню
про
великую
операцию
российской
разведки
по
глубокому
внедрению
русской
нелегальной
шпионской
сети
в
Америке
.
А
ты
читаешь
материалы
дела
и
просто
падаешь
со
стула
от
дилетантизма
этих
великих
шпионов
.
И
даже
мечтаешь
,
чтобы
это
была
не
великая
сеть
СВР
,
а
какая
-
то
частная
отмывочная
,
чтобы
не
было
так
мучительно
больно
за
мои
и
ваши
деньги
,
потраченные
на
допотопные
методы
борьбы
с
главным
идеологически
противником
,
становящимся
нам
теперь
нежным
другом
.
Гениально
,
кстати
,
сказал
Ариэль
Коэн
: «
Да
просто
отношения
перезагрузили
,
а
шпионов
забыли
предупредить
».
Наталия Геворкян –
Обозреватель «Газеты.Ru»
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Gazeta.ru, A Twisted Reality
by Natalia Gevorkyan (in English and Russian) An article about the changing nature of media in Russian society and how those in power are manipulating society to enrich themselves.
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