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Tolerance Is A Good Thing. But It Can Be Taken A Bit Too Far

July 4, 2009

Tolerance Is A Good Thing. But It Can Be Taken A Bit Too Far There was a joke in Russia in Soviet times. It went like this: a meeting starts at a large enterprise, summoned by the chairman of the local Communist Party branch. The chairman announces: ‘We have decided, unanimously, at our last closed session of the local Party Committee to hang every third worker tomorrow, as we have to cut down our costs.’ A tense hush ensues. Then a hand goes up. A man asks: ‘Would we need to bring our own ropes or would the Party Committee provide the ropes for us?’

What this joke implied was that hideous things were happening in the Soviet Union and many people still accepted them as if they were normal things. And I remember how Westerners, including Brits, were asking me then how could it have happened that the Russian people allowed their political rulers to get away with all the horrible things they did. And I would usually explain that people in the Soviet Union had no influence on what was happening in their country, as there was no democratic process in place of holding their leaders to account or kicking them out. Just like it is happening in Russia nowadays, by the way, because the democratic mechanism that had existed for a few years in the 1990s was dismantled by the ruling regime so that it could protect itself from getting kicked out.

But now I would like to ask the British people a few questions, similar to the ones they have been asking me back in the days of the Cold War: how come you are allowing your political rulers to get away with bankrupting your country in favour of a handful of bankers? How is it that you do nothing about your Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and your Chancellor, Alistair Darling, (we have said it already: Darling really needs to change his surname and stop dying his eyebrows to be taken seriously) throwing away tens of billions of your money to save a dozen banks? Especially as Brown has not been even elected to run the country?

Now we, at StirringTroubleInternationally, have already called on the opposition to table a motion of no confidence in the government in the House of Commons. So how come no one else in Britain has joined us? We even went further and suggested a scenario under which the Queen would summon her military commanders and order them to arrest the government and disperse parliament so that a military cabinet, a junta, takes over for a while, to restore some sort of order in the economy, before a general election could be called. We realise that such a scenario sounds extreme. But is it not extreme when your own government is dismantling the country and destroying its economy?

What I find even more amazing is that tens of thousands of people are ready to gather in Hyde Park to protest against the war in Gaza and yet not a single demonstration takes place against the mad policies of Brown and his cabinet. Future generations are saddled with an astronomical debt, but no one seems to give a damn about it. Sure, the war in Gaza was a bad thing. But what about the one much closer to home? The one that is waged against the people of Britain by their own government?

For me and other Russians living in Britain this is a déjà vu situation: we have seen it all before in the Soviet Union. Political leaders going berserk and destroying everything. At least then we could not protest openly, as there was a danger that we would have been thrown into prison or whacked by the KGB.

But what is exactly preventing the British people from stopping their government from destroying their country? Or are they too busy watching the box and getting into more debt, using the last money on their credit cards to buy discounted Chinese made junk that they do not need anymore?

Tolerance is all fine. But it can land you in serious trouble – if you take it too far.

– End –

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