The other day I stumbled upon a wonderful short, short story by Robin Jones entitled “Where is Pyotr Zhukov?”(1) In the Soviet gulag, a sharp-thinking criminal takes on the identity of a recently-deceased fellow prisoner. As it turns out, the dead man was a violinist—“a fine violinist,” declared as such by Stalin himself.
Soon the presumed violinist is released from the prison camp and transported to Moscow to “serve Russia, and to play before the leader himself.” Only one problem, the fake Zhukov can’t play a note.
On opening night, Vanya dresses in elegant black and goes to the stage and waits in the wing. Comrades! Welcome the dear leader’s most favoured violinist – the finest west of the Urals – Pyotr Zhukov!
Caught in the spotlight, there is only one thing to do—take the bow and scrape it across the strings.
And so, he begins to slice and stab with the bow. He cuts at the violin as if it were a weak inmate protecting a ration. He scratches and rips until the violin screams into the stalls. He tortures the violin not into notes but into shrieks and fury.
When he finally stops his frightening attack on the instrument, what can the horrified audience do?
[T]hey were told this man was favoured by Stalin. And Stalin is here in attendance. And Stalin is never wrong. So what can the audience do? No applause for Zhukov is no applause for Stalin.
And so they applaud. They weep and stand and applaud. And the murderer hears the applause as though it were for a true Pyotr Zhukov. And no one in the audience dares stop. . . . [A] triumph of beauty is declared and the triumph is Stalin’s who recognised Zhukov as the finest west of the Urals. A new Soviet music is born and all are blessed that hear it.
I will leave you now to read the rest of the story.
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After 85 years, it was time for an update of Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish’s classic ballad “Stars Fell on Alabama.”
“A Hurricane Will Fall on Alabama” doesn’t quite scan, but President Trump proclaimed it—and comrade leader is never wrong. And soon the presidential truth machine went to work to quash any dissent.
President Trump, seeking to justify his claim of a hurricane threat to Alabama, pressed aides to intervene with a federal scientific agency, leading to a highly unusual public rebuke of the forecasters who contradicted him, according to people familiar with the events.
In response to the president’s request, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly correct the forecasters, who had insisted that Alabama was not actually at risk from Hurricane Dorian.(2)
And Ross hopped to it. calling
Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, at home around 3 a.m. Friday, Washington time, and instructed him to clear up the agency’s contradiction of the president.
Then Wilbur (I-Am-Vying-For-Chief-Grifter) Ross went even further, displaying an admirably-dictatorial fist:
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reportedly threatened to fire some of the nation’s weather officials if they refused to lie to the public about the projected path of Hurricane Dorian.(3)
It’s a rule of this administration that everyone must fall in line. After all, comrade leader is never wrong.
And the dissenters can consider themselves lucky. In another time and place, they’d be on a transport to the gulag.
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