It could be the new parlor game. “The troika says” and each time the troika says something even more ludicrous than before, and you just have to jump to it and do it because otherwise you lose! The troika says stand on your head for twenty minutes, and you do. The troika says, throw off your clothes and run in the freezing rain for two hours, no matter the consequences, and you do.
Now it doesn’t matter when you die of pneumonia because you’ve done what the troika says and that’s all that matters, because otherwise, you lose.
And tremble, tremble, shiver, shake! God forbid that you should lose to the troika! They’ll cut off your life support!
And don’t you dare say that since we have already gone completely bankrupt as a country, what difference will it make? Whatever life support we may be on it is hardly working very well, now is it? No heating, scarce food, no work, no play, no rights and you have to keep paying and paying and paying in taxes and more taxes, because the programme never works, but you still have to keep paying money you simply do not have!
But that is the way of parlor games. They are silly.
But at least when you lose in a parlor game you realise it is not the end of the world! And when we tell the troika to go to hell and …. all that. You know something? Not only will we realise it is not the end of the world, but the realisation may fire us into action and out of this depressed debilitating inertia.