It always amuses me when Doris Eisler attempts to educate us on the many and varied evils of her favourite bugaboo (apart from George W. Bush), the Catholic church. Her inaccurate and wildly ahistorical statements about the church remind me of nothing so much as a secular Chick tract. It made me laugh aloud to hear her explanation of the history of brainwashing, for she should have looked a little closer to her own ideological home. The practice of brainwashing emerged mainly in the dictatorial regimes of the last century: Russia, China, North Korea, and Mrs. Eisler's beloved Cuba. Formal study of the practice dates to about the 1960s. True, brainwashing was also a hallmark of various religious cults; the 1990s want their front page news back. But for the most part, it was the province of the tyrannical left.
That said, and while I am likewise amused by Mrs. Eisler's attempts to inject several new subjects into the conversation – brainwashing, Bush, Catholicism, etc. – like some sort of rhetorical point defence system, I should point out that the conversation in which we were engaged pertained to the situation in Ukraine. It's rather rude to attempt to shift the discussion away from that, and I can't help but wonder why she is attempting to do so. Because I never said anything about brainwashing; I suggested that she had voluntarily chosen to accept as valid Russian propaganda about the Ukraine situation, which is quite a different thing. Perhaps the psychological phenomenon we should be discussing is not brainwashing, but projection?
On the actual topic of the Ukraine, Mrs. Eisler writes: "the cruel treatment of the helpless citizens of foreign countries on some pretext or other, including supposed humanitarian intervention in a mess we ourselves have engineered, is unacceptable, and we should not be cajoled into thinking it is." I cannot help but agree, which is why I am curious as to why Mrs. Eisler is so quick to accept, seemingly, Russian actions in e.g. Crimea as being ... what, exactly? Legitimate humanitarian intervention?
She also writes: "preventing an economic collapse and world war is a worthy and moral objective", and here too I agree. But here too, I cannot help but wonder why Mrs. Eisler allies herself with Putin and Russia; is Russia preventing a war by amassing tens of thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border, or by fomenting pro-Russian uprisings within still yet more areas of the country, beyond just Crimea? Is Russia preventing a war by ordering her warplanes to "buzz" American warships in the Mediterranean? Does Putin's willingness to play fast and loose with Europe's oil supply routes if it suits his purposes to do so really not flirt with the risk of economic collapse?
If so, this is a strange definition of peace and economic order.
And that brings us once more to the word limit. Thus: Happy Easter, Mrs. Eisler and all else who read this, and God bless.
Kenneth Kully, St. Albert
