“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell,” says the book that in my Moscow youth was classed as anti-Soviet propaganda.
(The newly pious Col. Putin remembers those days well: he started his career in the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate, part of whose duties was to cut off the import of such subversive literature sent to Russia by Western enemies of progress.)
In Britain this book isn’t yet banned. It’s simply dismissed as irrelevant: there’s no soul, nor any hell. There’s only the body, and it must be pampered in every conceivable way until it’s no more.
Most of those ways take money, lots of it. Since society’s desiderata have been boiled down to purely material needs, pursuit of money, otherwise known as happiness, moves to the forefront of our private and public aspirations.
It follows logically that the morality of good and evil is replaced with the morality of not getting caught. Since it’s all about having a painless, enjoyable life only money can buy, why be fastidious about the means of acquiring money or its sources? You only live once.
Whatever works, as long as it’s legal. And if it isn’t quite legal, that’s fine too, provided one can get away with it. (Pecunia non olet – Vespasian enunciated that principle when the material for the aforementioned subversive book was still being gathered.)
That, however, involves a misapprehension. For no society can really get away with it. I can’t vouch for what happens in hell, but cynical amorality inevitably gets punished in earth. Body politic can survive any amount of physical damage, but not a thrust through its very heart.
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” says the anti-Soviet book young Vova Putin worked so diligently to toss into the bonfire.
That gets us to the presence of the so-called oligarchs on British soil, and the high six-figure contributions they’ve allegedly made to the Tories.
That sum is downright paltry when compared to the billions in laundered cash they’ve injected into the sclerotic veins of the British economy, but for some unfathomable reason people still expect the government to be more moral than a bank.
The proof that the Conservatives received money from Russian gangsters… sorry, I mean oligarchs… is much weaker than the proof of the Russians indulging in mass murder on British soil.
But of course nothing short of prima facie evidence (or not even that) will ever satisfy our regiment of Putin trolls if their idol is shown to be a mass murderer.
Unless Putin is caught on a CCTV camera personally spraying nerve gas on a car door handle, it’s not the Russians what done it. But any factually unsupported rumour of government corruption will be accepted as, well, gospel, provided it serves the cause of our moral equivalence junkies, otherwise known as Putin trolls.
However, in this case I believe the rumour. For I detect no moral barriers that our government erects to protect itself from attacks on its very soul. They do a reasonably good job surrounding the Houses of Parliament with concrete slabs, so, their bodies adequately protected, who cares about the soul? It doesn’t exist anyway.
So why not take a few lousy hundred grand from the likes of Abramovich and Deripaska? After all, we’re happy to welcome them and their billions here. And we don’t ask how those billions were made, do we? The Faustian deal was struck, and so far HMG has kept its end of it.
It has taken a series of murders committed by Putin’s hit squads in Britain for HMG to start making noises about impounding the filthy lucre and kicking its owners out of Britain. That only shows where the government’s heart is (see above).
Never mind the poisonous presence of hundreds of Russian gangsters in the better parts of London and Surrey. Never mind the soul-destroying moral damage. It’s the physical damage that upsets us, especially when it oversteps a certain implicitly set limit.
Yet that presence has been as poisonous as they come for years. Billions in dirty money sloshing about sully as all, by dripping poison into our society drop by drop.
For there are hundreds if not thousands of bankers, stock brokers and fund managers knowingly accepting money of criminal origin. Drop!
Hundreds of estate agents flogging mansions and riverside apartments to thugs they know to be thugs. Drop!
Hundreds of property developers who know whom they develop those properties for. Drop!
Hundreds of owners of shops and boutiques in Bond Street, Sloane Avenue and elsewhere knowingly playing lickspittle to criminals and their molls. Drop!
Thousands of ‘socialites’ falling over themselves to attend lavish parties thrown by an Abramovich or a Deripaska. Drop!
Bipartisan politicians being entertained on Deripaska’s yacht (one of them now edits the London newspaper owned, through his son’s proxy, by a KGB officer.) Drop!
Hundreds of Sloanies desperately trying to wangle an invitation to Abramovich’s box at Stamford Bridge. Drop!
And so forth, ad nauseam, until all those drops converge into a mighty river of poison engulfing our soul, which, contrary to the popular error, does exist.
I do hope (against all hope) that HMG will join other civilised countries in throwing a cordon sanitaire around the source of that global poison, Putin’s kleptofascist junta. And that we’ll have the courage to make sure Russian criminals are thrown back inside that fence.
And their money? Frankly, I don’t care much about it. It would be just if we confiscated their loot – the word that accurately describes the wealth of every Russian billionaire. But at a pinch let them take it back where it came from, and hope they choke on it.
P.S. Speaking of Putin trolls, I’ve been inundated with their cretinous e-mails for the past few days. Driven to distraction, I finally replied in a language no gentleman should ever use – unless he really means it. I did, and I hope they understood every part of it.
Control the body and control the mind.
And even when the body not controlled the mind still having been “messed” with the body not able to respond properly.
I simply don’t understand why we accept this dirty money, we’re not impoverished without it. People like to sling mud at our politicians about their wealth, but really, the British PM is a pauper compared to most celebrities.