Elena Panfilova: "About jaws and fangs"

Vice President of Transparency International Elena Panfilova talks on Facebook about the unpleasant metamorphoses that happen to the friends of her youth. Well-known people suddenly grow fangs, from which the poison of obscurantism and the general line drips.

"... just yesterday this man and he was your friend from your youth, you and him were drinking vermouth from the Balaton store and planning to make a joint transgalactic leap into the wonderful future of our beautiful Motherland; or you were just classmates and fellow students and gave each other copy down notes, ran together from the detective squad from an underground disco and wrote scripts for discussions in, scary to say, a student political club, or in general you had a novel or a romantic sketch, you held hands, looked at the stars and the whole world was yours, and he was wonderfully general.

And then suddenly - bam! - the hand on the dial of the century turned only a quarter of a turn, and this man and that one, although he seems to be the same outwardly, and the common memories have not disappeared, but his fangs suddenly suddenly grew, and dog-like snot drips from them in thick green snot nonsense of obscurantism, and he snaps them in all seriousness right next to your neck. Yes, okay, at your neck, and at the neck of our same common beloved Motherland.

And I keep thinking about this and thinking and thinking and thinking - how does it happen that time after time both I and you come across a moment when we have to think or write: “oh, I know him, her... . He, she’s not a bad person... I know for sure... and a strong professional... but... but... but..."

“No, the easiest way to come up with a funny version is that when they come there, to the empyrean authorities with the best intentions, they register, bend down to sign a registration sheet, and at a very special moment a pale man in a black cloak jumps out of a very special closet in the Personnel Department with a scarlet lining, but, most likely, in a mouse-gray suit, and plunges into their defenseless necks his yellowish, carious teeth of sovereignty and clamping. Well, and then all this: the jaw of a normal person just yesterday turns to stone, the fangs extend, and then all that. everything works as written.”

“But then, then you suddenly feel some kind of “Van Helsing syndrome” inside (yes, my favorite films are exactly about this, plus “Sleepy Hollow”), and you begin to frantically look for the ingredients so that no, not to return these and those - what fell is lost - and not allow yellowish carious teeth to suddenly close on the necks of your graduates or your sons.

Yes, and endlessly bleat defensively about those whom you seemed to know and love, valued, in some places couldn’t imagine life without them, and now you don’t have time to shake off the splashes of their fanged, snot-like poison of the general line, to be honest, you’ve somehow hesitated.”