The Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, and especially the full-scale invasion of the rest of Ukraine in 2022, made a huge statement about the conduct of nations after the suspension (or abuse) of reason.
The sheer savagery of the onslaught faced by ordinary Ukrainians added to Russian aggression the dimension of sadism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown us that it is possible for post-Cold War man to stretch one’s limited ideological/imperial vision and inflate one’s fears to invent a need for real wars.
In addition, he has systematically guided us into the contemplation of violence, raw brutality and the humiliation of other people as a source of pleasure.
This could be a question of morality just as it could be a question of ill-health of a mental kind, and it is always hard to resolve such questions.
However, what the victims in Ukraine call sustained Russian state terrorism seems such a normal regular cleaning operation to the authorities in Moscow that they almost seem to be inviting the spectators to share with them the pleasure they derive from the blood-letting.
Ukraine’s heroic fight back for survival is not in my frame here. Across the Atlantic, when US President Donald Trump got into power the first time (2016), one of his obsessions was building a wall along the (US) border with Mexico.
Trump was greatly troubled by people who crossed illegally and entered the US to work or to push narcotic drugs.
He believed the wall would stop or greatly reduce this traffic, which, incidentally, included menial work seekers from other parts of South America making their way through Mexico.
The effectiveness (or lack of it) of the parts of the wall that the US built is not my present concern.
Instead, I am recalling the boyish glee with which President Trump typically talked about this barrier, and even more glee when he realised and proclaimed that there were mechanisms by which he would make Mexico pay for the structure.
The wall was, therefore, not merely a necessity in Trump’s various calculations. It provided an opportunity for him to inflict pain on the Mexican people, a much weaker people, which in itself seems to have given him a special kind of pleasure.
The rhetoric in America’s current confrontation with Iran reinforces rather than negates this interpretation.
The language of the ruler of a long-established Western democracy that usually espouses liberal values has not been different from that of a rigid mid-Eastern theocracy, relishing the prospect of killing each other and even annihilating each other’s nations.
It was very much the same shade of sadism that tinted the voice from Jerusalem. Netanyahu. All these are very powerful men in powerful nations.
Many rulers in smaller and less powerful nations look up to them as their mentors, or at least as examples with footage to show that their own excesses in their little countries are not so outlandish after all. They are the global norm.
And all these sadists have their religious advocates; in Moscow, Washington or Jerusalem. Never tired of sowing his version of God when chatting with two or three fellow pastors on a local radio station, a pastor has recently been propagating the idea that God has a different (less stringent) measure (or moral standard) for rulers.
The implication is that, for rulers, the all-encompassing Christian commandment to ‘love your neighbours as you love yourselves’ need not apply. He is lucky God is in a state of divine rest and cannot respond.