Budapest, February 27, 2022
You did not ask me anything but I’m telling you what it looks like seen from Budapest, where from Thursday morning it is impossible for me to think of something else.
There was first shock, I was expecting this war but not so fast and not in this form, what form, I do not know exactly, this implacable and total form that leaves no chance at Ukraine, which in any case Thursday seemed to leave no chance (I’m a little more optimistic tonight, even if I know that tomorrow morning, Kiev may have fallen, and Zelensky dead or captured).
Then, like many of us, I say us for Hungary, in France I do not realize, I went through a crisis of world war anxiety, but it was quickly folded, I am spent in a few hours of “help my cellar is much too crowded to make a shelter worthy of this name” to the serene conclusion that good, in case of nuclear attack, my cellar, anyway, will turn into luxurious crater d Home for cockroaches and cockroaches.
Crying rage and shame
In parallel, there was also this strange emotional state, which reminded me of France from 2015, where because of the identification (I could have been in Bataclan / I could have been Ukrainian) I thought, in a piteous mix of relief and fear, at the same time “for the moment I am safe” and “who knows if next time, it will not be us”. Let’s be clear, they are not rational thoughts, but it is precisely why I make the parallel, because against terrorism too, rational thoughts tend to stop very far.
But what mutizes me deeply, which makes me cry with rage and shame, which pushes me to return, again and again, towards the compulsive reading of the press, kind of toxic bottle of which I can no longer pass me, it is the impression that we, that is to say at least the European Union, are looking at, arms crossed, a small getting beaten by a big in the yard, and that If we do not move, it is because we know that the big ones has a gun and in case of intervention, it will turn back to the generalized confrontation. It seems to me that it is exactly where used utilitarianism (maximization of collective happiness) and ethics (there are morally good or bad actions by definition), because yes, avoid a world war probably serves the interest of the interest of Many and it is on this altar that we sacrifice Ukraine.
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