Vladimir Putin’s Common Sense By Jerry Wilson for Red State
The dictionary defines obscurantism as either “opposition to the increase and spread of knowledge” or “deliberate obscurity or evasion of clarity.” In either case, it’s not a word prone to frequent occurrence in everyday conversation. It is the word, or at least the Russian equivalent thereof, Russian president Vladimir Putin recently chose in delineating Russia’s division with the West regarding the latter’s ongoing gender self-definition wars.
Putin made the comment in his annual year-end press conference, held this past Thursday. While one can safely imagine such events are far more akin to a Joe Biden presser tongue bath … er, conference than any given White House press corps versus #OrangeManBad — in terms of unfriendly or at least difficult questioning, interesting tidbits still came out to play. To wit:
“I adhere to that traditional approach that a woman is a woman and a man is a man. A mother is a mother, a father is a father. And I hope that our society has the internal moral protection dictated by the traditional religious denominations of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Later he added:
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“If somebody thinks that a woman and a man are the same thing, they’re welcome to [their opinion], but a certain common sense should exist,” the head of state pointed out.
There’s a lot to mull over here.
Putin is a fascinating fusion of Russian old, middle, and new. A product of the Soviet Union’s strong-arm socialistic/communistic political era, unlike many products of his time he understands the value of traditional Russian culture. The most noticeable difference between Putin and his predecessors is his approach to the church.
While his personal beliefs are known only to himself and God, outwardly, Putin has utterly discarded the USSR era’s open disdain for, and none-too-subtle efforts to at least reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the church’s influence on Russian society. Instead, Putin has embraced the church and its insistence on traditional moral values.
