Struggle: Grip of steel - стр. 10

– Blessings on your healing, my son..... Only Jah's faith will heal you.....

Bolotnikov

That inane inability of people to become better than they can be. And the anger with which they meet any attempt at change. They see you as the enemy. An even bigger enemy than the person who actually made them live worse and make themselves worse. And weaker. What a hard line those two words have.

Weaker and stronger. If we allow ourselves to change, is it strength to change things, or weakness to allow change? Or conversely, is it strength that leaves us the same, or weakness that prevents us from changing error to truth?

Colonel Bolotnikov had no answers to these questions now. He was simply leading the very ten percent of people who had accepted the new changes, and agreed to be free against the will of the majority. About seven hundred people in all. And how they were still being looked at when they left. They even tried to shout phrases like "weaklings", "broken", and even "damned", the latter even caught on amongst themselves. When Bolotnikov gave them the opportunity to choose a name for the new Maquis unit they were now, they all eventually agreed on the word, and it was now the Cursed Battalion.

And the timing was perfect. They really were the cursed ones who stayed. Who didn't want to leave. Who didn't want to give themselves a chance to be free. And take responsibility for it. This word for Bolotnikov became something like a red rag for a bull. He always took responsibility for himself, as if it were a gift, not a burden to be carried on his back.

It was that word that brought him so close to his entire new squad. And everyone could see that their commander was someone who was just as damned as they were. And who has nowhere to retreat to, who, like them, also has all the bridges burned behind him. Want to even go back, and they'll tear you apart on arrival just for not dying when you were without them. That's the kind of hatred you can't confuse with anything.

When people who have let someone go start wishing hard for the suffering, pain and death of the one they let go. While outwardly saying that this is a pattern – a natural position of the wrong decision that was made about them. And internally realizing that if this person succeeds, it will mean that they themselves are wrong.

And they cannot allow themselves to be wrong, first of all, for themselves. Therefore, any return will be interpreted by them as a victory of their opinion and their way of life, which means that it is necessary to punish those who denied it, resisting it. And this will also mean the complete abolition of any framework of punishment for this, because the punished will be a priori infinitely guilty.