The less you know, the better you sleep. Russian Saying
I was in Montgomery on a Civil Rights tour in March 2023 with Denise and several other PCUSA Mid-Council Leaders – specifically in the breakfast buffet line of our hotel – when my phone rang. It was our daughter – TBC – who shared what she’d just heard from another friend. “Evan has been kidnapped in Russia,” she said. Just at that moment, his picture came up on the huge TV screen in the dining room with the headline: “Russia Arrests Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich on Spying Charges.” I was still on the phone with TBC and said, “Actually, it looks like he’s been arrested.”
TBC had met him through a Bowdoin friend and it reminded me why I had loved living in Northern Virginia. Often the national news was our local news. There’d be a national news report about a special meeting in Yuma or an attack on a U.S. military base and I would have heard about it from a church person or a soccer parent before it was public knowledge. It made national and global news feel more personal.
It was also international news when Evan was released on August 1, 2024 in a 24 person swap including the U.S. prisoner Paul Whelan. Evan had been imprisoned falsely for 491 days before his release.
I call him “Evan” even though I don’t know him. But I felt sick imagining what he and his parents were going through. My own children were his age. It felt like he could have been one of my own.
Read his book. Not only is it an excellent report of what happened before, during and after his detention; it also reminds us that what we are experiencing in our own country is familiar in Putin’s Russia.
- When Putin attacked Ukraine, his plan was to “demilitarize and denazify” them.
- Putin called the leaders of Ukraine “drug-addled” telling Ukrainians to stop listening to them.
- In casual conversations with Russian locals, during the course of a single period of time, Evan met a woman who said, “Ukrainians would never forgive our country,” another Russian who said “Ukrainians got what they deserve for provoking Moscow,” and another man who “preferred not to think too hard.” “It’s none of my business,” the man said, “The less you know, the better you sleep.” We live among realists, deniers, and the indifferent.
- Evan writes, “The government had criminalized the spread of what it called ‘fake news’ about its armed forces and imposed a penalty of up to ten years in prison.”
- While Evan and other reporters saw what was going on, many Russians continued to go about their everyday lives. “It feels strange, seeing all these people go about their lives, like nothing’s going on,” he said to a friend. “You’ll get used to it,” she replied.
Sound familiar? I’m not saying we in the United States have succumbed to the levels of propaganda and fearfulness that happen under Putin but every day, anyone who’s paying attention will recognize that our leaders demonize and mischaracterize their enemies. Our leaders threaten those who protest the injustices we can see with our own eyes. OR we know people who prefer not to think about it. We have become accustomed to many of our friends and family acting as if nothing unconstitutional is going on.
Read this book. It’s not only an excellent read; it helps explain what’s going on in our world right now – both in Russia and in the United States. And then, please vote for candidates who refuse to spread lies and deception.
