Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank

I still have this powerful mental image of Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank.

I don't recall any one photo in particular. Vaguely, perhaps ...

I imagine him aged and weakened by his own political chicanery and alcoholism.

The latter is rumor, not substantiated by more than the dire nature of the situation.

He'd nearly sold the country out from under its citizens to the New York banking cartel.

His Dachau, security and family were assured, from his share of IMF loans diverted to he and the accomplices. '98, wasn't it? Shortly thereafter, the banker's cabal lost their asses as well as their shirts, only to be made whole again. The ones who survived ....

That must make Bill Browder late to the party, any trace of gravitas light in substantial proofs of his invention of the Magnitsky plot to commit tax fraud. Eventually, John McCain carried his water, loyal to whatever his captains of industry would demand. Nations followed suit, made paper tigers of their own promotion.

I can't recall the epiphany Boris experienced, if there were one, the realization he'd been horn swaggered into his own peculiar boondoggle, or, to whatever Gulag he was about to commit his fellow man.

All that was required was he maintain the Lie.

Was it the day, the field, or the realization Russian soldiers under his command were about to mow down his comrades and sovereign kin? Did he struggle through the fog of war, or had he felt struck by a bolt of lightning?

Could those grunts see past that rotten duty the angst in Yeltsin's blood shot eye, climbed up in plain sight on that spartan Russian tank, surrounded by housewives and uncles, the odd veteran waiting for the inevitable, and willful children out on a lark ... ?

Does dissent kill, or is it suicidal? On that day, neither.

a flock of 'jays

ravage through the park -

the mourning dove

silent in repose