© REUTERS / Brendan McDermid
People rally to protest the Trump administration's reported transgender proposal to narrow the definition of gender to male or female at birth, at City Hall in New York City, US, October 24, 2018.
For centuries, there's been talk of Russia converging on the West, emulating it. Now, though, divergence is the new name of the game, and, as Vladimir Putin said last week,
the West is moving in a direction Moscow won't follow.
The Russian president, it seems, has been working on his own concept of the elusive 'Russian idea' - a concept that has long puzzled philosophers and historians. At its heart, it suggests a nation has to have some unifying purpose or values that set it apart from others. Despite the preoccupation, this isn't a universally accepted truth - it's possible nations could substitute meaning for administrative functions.
However, from 1917 to 1991, the Soviet Union's purpose was clear: building communism. With the collapse of the USSR, this objective disappeared, and the post-Soviet Russian Federation was left struggling for an alternative. In the late 1990s, Boris Yeltsin established a commission to explore the Russian idea, but it failed dismally. Nobody could agree what it should be. The civic idea of nationhood remained supreme. Nevertheless, the search for the Russian idea continues.
Comment: What benefits? As has been stated multiple times, children are much less susceptible to Covid than adults and they don't pass it on. They admit there are risks, so how can the benefit outweigh the risk? What advantage is there in vaccinating children?
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