Tuesday [10]

What a wonderful take on the Russians

So true, so perspicacious and so much my times ... at that time, you see, USA/USSR relations were my university research field ... I being anti-Nixon and anti-Watergate, calling for impeachment, fascinated with Segretti, even the evil genius Colson, Dean, anti-Haldeman the Gatekeeper, then Woodstein, G Gordon Liddy, Deep Throat ... ask me about Katie Graham's WaPo. And more widely ... Bill Ayers and the Weathermen whom I admired ... back then.

Then, as Holly Valance said in a recent interview ... we grew up, politically, we were now the Awoken. Mind you, I was always a wag ... even in schooldays I was reported for taking serious things too flippantly ... and still do I confess. Then, as did many student radicals, I got a job and the whole vista of full employment began, spouse, family etc. etc.

Then the visits to America began ... to the west coast, SoCal ... and not LA but further south by 70 miles, plus north ... my field then was Del Mar, Dana Point, Yorba Linda, La Casa Pacifica, Orange County ... I stayed just down the road from Disneyland ... different world altogether ... yep, these were GOP people and I was agreeing with them.

Strangely, I was seeing Nixon in a new light ... the man's grasp of foreign policy was first rate ... but many have said that ... there was just something "real nice" about the people I met ... we'd take a spin to Palm Springs to shop on a 122 degree F day ... and so on.

Different America ... along that coast was the old America of the 40s and 50s ... and it was so nice.

But the clip above is also about Russia, where I lived twelve years and that hard negotiator versus Russian hospitality was big they're a big-hearted people, obviously with bad elements among them, just as we are. 

Now Putin's the enigma ... yes, he was full on CCCP (in Russian), KGB etc. but the power behind him now, that which propelled him to power, were the siloviki ... which actually means the power or force or strength. You don't mess with them. Not to put too fine a point on it ... state mafia.

And one thing they're superhot on is the Old Russia in all its forms ... this was the Russia I saw, was with the people who were proud of what they could recall ... just as we are here on our side of politics. I for one can't see what's wrong with a people loving their own country ... not some muddy world-goo.

But something else then happens ... as globo-psycho take over the world with their dystopia, so we discover likeminded people who love their countries as they were. But shirley they would fight each other, would they not? Nope ... we love the Eva Vlaars, the Christine Andersons, the Martin Selners ... we support their fight against psycho-Wokery.

So I'm not inclined to put any of our allies down ... for what to do that? And the cumulative effect is that we're vastly more likely to bring world peace than any lefty ideologues with their faux friendships.