The Tragedy of Darth Zelensky, Clown of Kiev

Zelensky is the biggest hero of our dopamine-starved consumer culture, and has now been recognized as such by Time’s Person of the Year award. This recognition has many parallels with Barrack Obama’s Noble Peace Prize. Here’s why.

Barrack Obama was the young peace candidate, a 21st Century version of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, a likable, honest guy who single-handedly takes on the corrupt oligarchs of Washington. 2008 America was plagued by unwinnable wars overseas, a crumbling economy at home wracked by growing racial and cultural divisions. Looking back even now, there’s no reason to suspect that Obama was dishonest about his intentions. He seemed to mean everything he said. When his Republican rival Mitt Romney claimed Russia is the USA’s biggest threat, Obama mockingly replied “the 80s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

So, Obama was the new Jimmy Stewart, or at least that’s the perception of him the consumer media machine was selling us. That’s ultimately why he received the Nobel Peace Prize before he had even done anything to deserve it. And as it turned out, he didn’t deserve it. He prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous American presidents combined, escalated our wars overseas, started new wars, and vastly increased the size and scope of the surveillance state.

Like Obama, Zelensky ran for president on a peace platform. As a native Russian speaker with a successful comedy and acting career, he was uniquely qualified to mend familial relations in his own country, and in Russia. Also like with Obama, there’s no evidence to suggest that Zelensky was lying when he said he wanted peace. What went wrong? Maybe he just got bad advice. The biblical story of Rehoboam might give us some insight as to what happened:

Rehoboam went to ^jShechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. 2 And as soon as ^kJeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it (for ^lhe was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from¹ Egypt. 3 And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, 4 ^m“Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.” 5 He said to them, ⁿ“Go away for three days, then come again to me.” So the people went away.

6 Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, who had stood before Solomon his father while he was yet alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” 7 And they said to him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” 8 But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. 9 And he said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” 10 And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus shall you speak to this people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us,’ thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. 11 And now, whereas ^mmy father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’”

12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king said, ^o“Come to me again the third day.” 13 And the king answered the people harshly, and forsaking the counsel that the old men had given him, 14 he spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, ^m“My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” 15 So the king did not listen to the people, for ^pit was a turn of affairs brought about by the LORD that he might fulfill his word, which ^qthe LORD spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

There’s another historic figure Zelensky reminds me of. A certain freedom fighter in West Asia who courageously resisted Soviet aggression. Osama bin Laden.

Osama is interesting because he was an anointed hero of the liberal world order in one decade, just to become the universally hated villain of the following decade.

There’s a 2010 horror movie, Let Me In, about a lonely, bullied boy who falls in love with the girl next door, who turns out to be a vampire. The girl vampire lives with an old man who loves her so much, he goes out every night to kill people to feed her. But now he’s too old and feeble, so one of his nightly raids goes wrong and he’s injured. So his vampire girl feeds on him instead. At the end of the movie, the vampire kills the boy’s bullies and they run away together. Of course by then the viewer should understand the vampire girl’s pattern. Like the protagonist, the old man from earlier in the movie was also once a young boy who fell in love with the vampire. It’s a relationship that’s wonderful and thrilling at the beginning, but becomes less so as time goes on. The boy ages normally but the vampire stays a little girl forever. The boy eventually becomes (or at least looks) old enough to be her grandfather so whatever romantic thrill the relationship started with is long gone. But really, it’s a relationship that was doomed from the start. The boy has to repeatedly kill week after week until someone either kills him or she does. And returning to normal life isn’t an option because, no doubt, if he stayed in one place for long the blame for all his previous murders would eventually catch up with him. But, I can’t discount the obvious fact that both the old man and the new boy are madly in love with her so wouldn’t even consider leaving.

Osama is like the old man in the movie. He had a decades-long love affair with the deep state. But he eventually outlived his usefulness. Maybe he thought he could retire, but it turned out not to be true. Obama, the hero of the hour, sent a hit squad into Pakistan to kill a broken old man in his house.

One has to actually wonder if all the “intelligence” parroted to us by the media was even real. How could Osama bin Laden of all people successfully hide in Pakistan without the knowledge and permission of local authorities, and the US government itself? It would certainly be a lot less heroic if Osama had in fact been murdered by the people who were hiding him in the first place. Osama’s death actually reminds me of what Julius Caesar did to Vercingetorix. Kept him locked up in a cell until one day, out of convenience, Caesar decided to parade the old man outside and execute him in front of the adoring crowds of Rome.

Zelensky is man of the year now. But what will he be next year, or ten years from now? Will he still be a hero, or will he be a martyr? Or will he be a villain? I wonder what Osama was thinking when Navy SEALs burst into his house in the middle of the night.

Ian Kummer

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