If any members of Russian elites are reading this…

… you might want to check out some suggestions from Kevin D. Williamson at National Review: Russian Elites Must Step Up.

What to do about Alex Ovechkin, the Vladimir Putin crony who is a star player for the Washington Capitals? Or, as Jay Nordlinger asks: What about the great conductor Valery Gergiev, another Putin ally, or the pianist Denis Matsuev, who not only acts as a PR agent of the Putin regime but who also has specifically endorsed violence against Ukraine? What about soon-to-be-former Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch pressured into putting his team up for sale?

“Our fight is not with ordinary Russians,” the platitude insists. Perhaps. But these are not ordinary Russians.

Is an oligarch entitled to a private life? Is a celebrity?

Private life has been very much in decline in our time: A few people who want it cannot get it, and many more people who might have it do not want it, preferring instead to live their lives in public via social media — would-be celebrities who act as their own paparazzi. As it turns out, there was never any need for Big Brother to create a vast surveillance state — a few hundred million Little Brothers and Little Sisters have done that on their own, and we all live in the glass house they made, from disgruntled airline customers who flip out a little bit on camera to Russian oligarchs whose private jets can be tracked around the world by hobbyists doing the work that spy agencies used to do.

That's an "NRPlus" article, Russian Elitist, so you might have to figure out how to shell out for that. I'm pretty sure that will only be a minor problem for you.

May you have some major problems very soon.


Last Modified 2022-03-08 3:14 AM EDT