Kasparov’s endgame?

I’ve admired Garry Kasparov since I was in college.  His is the finest chess mind the human race has yet produced.  To study his play is to be awed and humbled.  His chess talent includes not only highly skilled play, but tremendous gifts for communicating his thoughts and ideas effectively.

Bottom line—and include Einstein and physics, or Buffett and capitalism, or any other person and skill you’d care to name in this construct—Garry Kasparov understands chess as well as anyone has ever understood anything.

He’s been in trouble recently, and I fear he’s got a lot more coming.

Throughout his playing career, and particularly since he retired from high-level chess two years ago, his has been a tireless and active voice for democracy and liberty in Russia.  He brings the same insight and analysis to politics that he brings to the chessboard.  He is well-informed, personable, and energetic.  People listen to him.

Which means he’s dangerous as hell in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Last month Kasparov attempted to (peaceably) present an election petition to a government office, and was imprisoned for five days.  He was allowed no visitors, from counsel or otherwise.  He wrote an outstanding column on the ordeal, in which he rightly points out that five days in jail isn’t such a big deal superficially, but of what principles does it speak?

Putin is a bad man, boys and girls.  He is consumed with the accumulation of power, both day to day and long-term, at the expense of the Russian people.  Glasnost and perestroika are specks on the horizon in the rear-view mirror.  Was that really less than 20 years ago?  The iron fist is swelling—and tightening.

This sort of thing is an excellent perspective restorative for me.  Whatever problems I have—whatever little crises I allow to damage my mood, or that I give breath to complain about—they all exist inside a framework of a damned good life in which I take a great many things for granted.  Kasparov is fighting for that framework itself, in a war that may well cost him his life.

You might also like:

• Eddie Van Halen dead at 65
  Photo by Alan Light. I wasn…
• Garry Shandling dead at 66
  Actor and comedian Garry Shandling died unexpectedly yesterday. He was 66 years old. I always enjoye…
• Rush Limbaugh dead at 70
  Rush in 2019. Photo: Gage Skidmore.[/…
• Bobby Fischer dead at 64
  Bobby Fischer, the only American ever to hold the official FIDE World Chess Championship, died of ki…
• Accomplished Saturday
  I saddled two unpleasant tasks—doing our taxes and cleaning up the study—together today. When I got …