Budapest, February 27, 2022
You didn’t ask me anything, but I’ll tell you all the same what it looks like from Budapest, where since Thursday morning it’s been impossible for me to think of anything else.
First there was the shock, I expected this war but not so fast and not in this form, what form, I don’t know exactly, this relentless and total form which does not give Ukraine a chance , which in any case on Thursday seemed to leave him no chance (I am a little more optimistic this evening, even though 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 don’t realize, I went through a world war anxiety attack, but that was quickly folded, I passed in a few hours of “help my cellar is much too crowded to make a shelter worthy of the name” to the serene conclusion that in the event of a nuclear attack, my cellar, in any case, will be transformed into a luxurious reception crater for cockroaches and cockroaches.
Cry with rage and shame
At the same time, there was also this strange emotional state, which reminded me of France in 2015, where because of the identification (I could have been at the Bataclan/I could have been Ukrainian) I thought , in a sorry mix of relief and fear, both “phew for now I’m safe” and “who knows if next time it won’t be us”. Let’s be clear, these are not rational thoughts, but that is precisely why I draw the parallel, because in the face of terrorism too, rational thoughts tend to go very far.
But what shakes me deeply, what makes me cry with rage and shame, what pushes me to return, again and again, to the compulsive reading of the press, a kind of toxic bottle that I can no longer do without, it is the impression that we, that is to say at least the European Union, are watching, arms crossed, a small being beaten up by a large one in the yard, and that if we do not let’s not move, it’s because we know that the big one has a gun and that in the event of intervention, it will turn into a generalized confrontation. It seems to me that this is exactly where utilitarianism (maximization of collective happiness) and deontology (there are morally good or bad actions by definition) collide, because yes, avoiding a world war probably serves the interest of the greater number and it is on this altar that we are sacrificing Ukraine.
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