Let our hands be clean!

From nearly half a century ago when the lies were more deliberate and intentional and obvious.  From Live Not By Lies by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  An antidote to the untruths pushed everyday.  We cannot stop the lying but we can stop accepting it.

We cannot do anything about it.

But we can!  We lie to ourselves to preserve our peace of mind.  It is not they who should be blamed but ourselves.  One can object, but cannot imagine what to do.  Gags have been stuffed into our mouths.  Nobody wants to listen to us and nobody asks our opinion.  How can we force them to listen to us? It is impossible to change their minds.  It would be logical to vote them out of office, but there are no elections in our country.  In the West people resort to strikes and protest demonstrations, but we are too downtrodden and it is too horrifying for us.  How can one suddenly renounce a job and take to the streets?  Other fatal paths tested during the last century by our bitter Russian history are even less suitable for us, and truly we do not need them.

Now that the axes have done their work and everything that was sown has sprouted, we can see that the young and presumptuous people who thought they would make our country just and happy through terror, bloody rebellion and civil war were themselves misled.  No thanks, fathers of enlightenment!  Now we know that infamous methods breed infamous results . . . Let our hands be clean!