Terry Mollner seems to be a decent, caring person, positing that “Vladimir Putin needs to be treated like a fellow human being” and that walking with a cloth armband between 6-6:30 p.m. in Amherst or Shutesbury will make a “statement” to the world, which presumably includes Putin.
Where to begin? First, contrary to what Mr. Mollner suggests, people like Putin (and Hitler) don’t respond to social interventions. He is an autocratic, corrupt thug, and responds to power — not social intervention — as suggested by Mr. Mollner, who appears to live in an alternate reality devoid of the brutal truth of Putin’s history of malevolence, aggression and inhumanity.
Mr. Mollner suggests that Putin could be the beneficiary of an intervention, comparing it to the family intervention of an alcoholic father to reign in destructive impulses. Unfortunately, this analogy is misplaced, as Putin is more akin to the family child molester or wife beater than the dipsomaniac father.
Putin’s past and present dedication to brutality, cruelty and avarice is not going to be altered by a social intervention. No, Mr. Mollner, Putin will not learn to sing “Kumbaya” in English at the next walk in Amherst and/or Shutesbury. The sad truth is that the only “intervention” Mr. Putin understands is strength and force. To suggest otherwise is naive, fatuous and disingenuous. Mr. Mollner says: “More humanness is agreementness.” But when humanness is sub-human that proposition is misplaced.
Praise to the heroic people of Ukraine.
Robert H. Astor
Florence