I had the same problem as base -- Putin is close to if not already a Fascist (but he's definitely totalitarian), but he still comes too short of outright genocide of a particular scapegoated race to merit such a loaded comparison to the Nazis -- until you clarified something that should have been more obvious to me, with regards to the letter Z. Which, come to think of it, is a letter doubly suspect (as in, it's even more dubious why pro-war Russians should use it, which makes it so much closer to the swastika in terms of meaning), as the letter Z does not belong to either the Ukrainian or Russian forms of Cyrillic. The irony being that the symbol, in Russia, is associated with historical anti-fascist struggles, this invasion, after all, having been framed as "denazification":
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/09/108547120...ia-ukraine
Interesting, but as a natively bilingual speaker, I feel the poem to be patently false. Good overall sentiment, the sympathy for the Russian people as a whole, whose history has been nothing but autocratic since the time of the tsars, with very brief windows of time when this autocracy, having been taken over by the people, actually worked for good, but I feel those two lines -- "which passes into mind without a pause / to translate or to thoughtfully resist" -- are what break this.
I live where both my native languages co-rule. Does propaganda in Filipino come more easily to me than propaganda in English? Perhaps it is because I do not have to translate English in my head, but at the same time Filipino will always be a language of comfort for me, and perhaps that is what contributes to me actively despising most forms of propaganda in that language. Filipino signifies familial love for me, the kind of love that, applied more universally, translates to the form of patriotism positive enough to resist the allure of empire, whether imposed upon us or imposed by us. Propaganda that otherwise distorts this -- say, Duterte preferring the vernacular when absolving himself of his extrajudicial murders -- I come to vehemently reject, perhaps moreso than if it were in the "colder, more intellectual, yet at the same time sexier, more romantic" language of English.
The lines before those two, as well as the last three lines of the poem overall, better "get" it, I think. It's not a matter of language -- another point, perhaps, is that a lot of Russian speakers speak at least three languages, Russian, English, and the language of their region: after all, Russia was and remains an Empire -- but a matter of exhaustion. When all you hear is propaganda, when all whom you hear doffs it disappears, and when you are yourself already struggling through poverty, then you cannot help but accept it, even champion it. Which, for all intents and purposes, is obvious, but people in such times too often forget the obvious -- hence why this poem, while wrong, I still feel is valuable.
On a more technical note, your command of meter is, as usual, enviable. xD
Oh, and on a more affable note: TranquilityBase, is it alright I keep referring to you by that name, or by "Base"? I feel like I've heard you referred to by a more proper name, but I keep forgetting what that name is.
Non-practicing atheist
. Ties back to title.
