There’s a new genre of selfie in Russia. People travel to the destroyed Mariupol to pose against the background of bombed out buildings. Young people, families with kids.
They actually travel there, spend money, bring kids to get a pic for their social media.
I don’t post any photos with kids because I respect these children more than their parents do. But can you imagine?
Then there are the videos, which are even scarier. Young families, giggly, excited. Holding up toddlers to give them a better look. “We are on our way to the beach, and we just had to drop by to see this. What an opportunity! Ha ha!”
Imagine a mom who’d purposefully take kids to a city filled with charred, hollowed out buildings. Would you take a child you love? Forget about the mental impact. What about physical danger? Anything can explode or collapse on your head at any time. There’s got to be something very powerful to make people pay money to take their kids there.
After Putin dies, what happens to all these people? Do they magically get cured? Babies in fatigue onesies, rolled out to military parades in their strollers. 5-year-olds marching and chanting military songs. 7-year-olds whose whole lives happened in wartime and whose big family road trip was to the bombed out Mariupol. Memories of the Dad, proud and solemn. “See all these ruins, son? We defeated Nazis here. Once again, we, Russians, saved the world.”
How often do people realize they were wrong? And not about something trivial but something like this. Will we once again hope that “free market and democracy” will be the magical cure? How is that different from our resident magical thinker placing 273 signs all over the campus?
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