To reference Marx, who was referencing Hegel:
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
It’s an interesting idea to contemplate, and one that, in my all too frequent idle moments, I am apt to.
For instance:
A German leader, having given his soldiery vital experience of combat in the Spanish civil war, increased his power over Austria, then invaded Czechoslovakia — while other powerful nations did nothing to prevent him. Using the existence of German ethnic minorities as an excuse he built up a massive military force on the borders of Poland and then invaded.
And then consider:
A Russian leader, having given his soldiery vital experience of combat in the Syrian civil war, increased his power over Belarus, then invaded Crimea — while other powerful states did nothing to prevent him. Using the existence of Russian ethnic minorities as an excuse he built up a massive military force on the borders of Ukraine and then…
Tragedy or farce? I guess we’ll see. But the western powers have clearly decided, by not allowing Ukraine to join NATO, that a full blown Russian invasion of Ukraine is not worth a military confrontation with Moscow. Maybe the Ukraine is Bohemia, not Poland.
Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you some lies
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Toadstool 