I have a friend who is a freshman. His university has introduced mandatory, useless subjects at the expense of the rest of the learning process. I am mainly talking about “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.” It is terrible propaganda, a twisting of facts, and the omission of others, all heavily seasoned with emotions and the speaker’s personal opinion.

I have the opportunity to attend this lecture without being a student and to publicly leave the instructor exposed, as the fairy tales coming out of his mouth are easily shattered by logical inconsistencies and objective reality.

The question itself: Is it worth the candle?

Anonymous question

Your doubts are completely justified. The question of whether it is worth the candle arises when the inevitable costs of an activity are large enough, while the potential gain is small. For example, if you played cards at night before the Industrial Revolution with tiny stakes, it is quite possible that even the person who hits the jackpot would not recoup the cost of the burned candles from their winnings. If, in a police state where the public expression of non-enthusiastic views is punished by imprisonment, you were to hold a debate with a state propagandist before an audience of a couple of dozen people, even a total rhetorical rout of the opponent might not be worth the subsequent lost years. However, blowing up a drone manufacturing plant might justify the risks of criminal prosecution in the eyes of many.

Of course, to make the game worth the candle, it is not necessarily about raising the stakes. You can limit yourself to reducing the costs. For example, participating in online debates under a pseudonym. Or moving to a less repressive state. Or engaging in a public dispute with a state lecturer on the subject of paleontology. In other words, playing cards with small stakes, but after the Industrial Revolution, when candles have become cheaper and you can burn even cheaper electricity instead.

In your particular case, where resources are scarce and you don’t want to take too many risks, but you want to harm a specific person who represents the hated state, and in such a way that they have a chance to understand their mistakes, it seems to me that a minor terrorist attack, also known as hooliganism, would be the optimal solution. The simplest thing would be to break a car window. And the stone used to break the window could be wrapped in a piece of paper with a profound saying. You know, something like, “Sudden arrival is the foundation of Russian statehood.” The person is left with nothing, and at the same time suffers an intellectual defeat, which is exactly what you wanted.

Of course, the recipe will have to be modified to fit the context, and obvious precautions will have to be taken: don’t get caught on camera, leave your phone at home, and don’t leave traces of your DNA on evidence.