Russia is not them, it is Us

A Response to Anne Applebaum's Article "Russia's Flashback to 1968" appearing in 19 August 2008 Washington Post.


What Anne Applebaum has refuses to acknowledge about Russia's current adventure in Georgia is that what has changed is not so much the ability of America to influence Russia as its the will.

The Russia today is no more the a product of communism than it is of Tsarism. The Russia of today is almost exclusively the product of the American conservative movement. It was conservative intellectuals, economists and hundreds upon hundreds of party hacks who descended upon the former Soviet Union and orchestrated the organized looting of the nation. The end of the Soviet Union was every bit as horrible as it's tyrannical leaders prophesied. As the oligarchs stole big and stole little the life expectancy plunged and the society reeled towards chaos.

Yeltsin who was constantly praised in the west would have made Hugo Chavez look like the bastion of legal propriety. The Russian peoples' devotion to Putin was only a desperate hope the could stop things from getting still worse. If he had run against Stalin he would lost in a landslide. The increased value of Russia's energy resources has put a certain guilded glint to Putin's reign. But make no mistake, things aren't really getting better. Russia far more resembles an African nation rich in resources than an Arab one.

The wealth is still flowing to a tiny few. Russia is burning through its energy wealth enriching the oligarch's instead of investing in education and infrastructure that could reverse Russia's decline. Russia's population is dwindling, its culture is disappearing. Conservatives often preached the fiction that Muslims would in the end overrun Europe. Russia is in fact the only country were a marked increase in Muslim influence is even remotely conceivable.

Russia's money isn't just enriching the Oligarchs. The Oligarchs are pumping their wealth in to western investments. In fact in some cases the Russian oligarchs and their western counterparts are neighbours in London where they really live. Just as Ms. Applebaum herself might as well live in Kansas considering her refusal to see Poland's children fleeing like so many rats from sinking their sinking state. While Poland's old men pitifully accuse each other of spying for this or that communist leader, the former communist leaders themselves, now capitalists oligarchs, have been quietly tearing apart Poland's infrastructure and selling it for scrap.

The nation that endured the Soviets, then Hitler, than the Soviets will not long survive the reality created by the last three American presidents. The conservatives' new Europe only limps along with massive subsidies from the old. Just as conservative red states only limp along with massive subsidies from the working economies of blue states.

Just as the Tienanmen square demonstrators where trying to slow the economic reforms that have so enriched the Chinese oligarchs and their American partners, any true democracy movement in Russia would resist the capital outflow that the United States in particular has become so dependent on.

Our own economy racked by ruinous tax cuts and groaning under massive wealth transfers from middle classes to the most wealthy simply can't afford a democratic government in either Russia or China. Just as American leaders, shamefully of both parties, publicly denounced the Tienanmen while they privately gave the thumbs up, now Chinese government routinely highlights the poverty of the vast countryside not not out socialist solidarity but to terrorize the urban elite about what would happen if democracy ever emerged.

Truly no one could possibly have less to gain from Georgia's or Ukraine's territorial integrity or democracy in Russia than America's economic elite. And, really they are not even really trying that hard to create a pretense otherwise.

Response to Anne Applebaum's article Candle in the Wind

Ms. Applebaum's article regarding the anniversary of Princes Diana's "Like a Candle in the Wind" death is not only poorly written, but frighteningly poorly written. Her argument is sound enough. Princess Diana was indeed an emotional dimwit, or as I liked to think of her, the stylish wacky older sister I never had. My younger sister is stylish, brilliant and studious. But all of Applebaum's points in support of her argument were either exaggerations, half truths or outright falsehoods. At one point in the article she claims that she is a "Briton." She may well be, but the fact that she was born in the United States and, at least according to Wikipedia, lives in Poland, one might consider to her be American, European, or Polish. Any of which would allow us to judge her breathtaking ignorance of the United Kingdom a tad less harshly.

Funerals are generally planned to reflect the personality of the deceased. There can be no question that Diana's funeral would have been her "dream" funeral if she had ever considered such a thing. Although I imagine she might have preferred that her brother had just kept quiet. One must remember also that her death was sudden and unexpected. Britons had only days to consider how to mourn her. Her grave site was chosen explicitly to reduce tourist visits. Britons do not enjoy road trips.

The late Queen Mother on the other hand had been an fixture of British society for over three generations. For years the BBC did a yearly dress rehearsal, complete with black suits stored in lockers against such an eventuality, of the announcement of her death. The disparity in self reported reactions to the funeral is probably more likely a reflection of British ambiguity regarding celebrity and the individualism it entails than a true variance in public feeling.

Diana influenced even the insanely conservative institution that it is the British monarchy. I doubt that Buckingham Palace would have made a point of sharing a picture of Prince William washing a toilette if it had not been for Diana. Ironically, her struggles with the monarchy undoubtedly made possible Charles' eventual civil marriage to his true beloved. As for the princes, they were shielded from the press by a gentleman's agreement with Fleet St. made at their births, not after Diana's death. Prince Charles has never been shy about expressing his opinions which are as wacky as anything from Diana. He even expressed his wish to do duty as a hygiene product for the Duchess Camila.

On the political front, the transition from Blair to Brown was the result of a political deal between the two made before Diana's death. Even so Blair, enjoyed an abnormally long tenure as prime minister despite leading the nation into an unpopular war. He was certainly never rejected by the British public as soundly as his even more manipulative counterpart, Bush, was by the American public. Diana's true legacy is that she hugged AIDS patients. It was just like her to respond to a world wide epidemic with hugs. Her hugs were pivotal in moving beyond irrational fear of AIDS to realistic solutions. Even today when I take my leave of my HIV positive friend, and dog walking buddy, we hug warmly. As corny as it sounds, a little bit of that hug is from the princess.

In contrast a pat on Queen Elizabeth's royal bum by the Prime Minster of Australia, threw Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth into constitutional crisis which was, thankfully, resolved diplomatically. However the assault, gentle as it was, was an intentional and maybe even sexual political act that still, a decade later, has repercussions in Australian politics.

Unfortunately, Ms Applebaum's arguments are not only a shame to her, but also a reflection of the Bush era of American incompetence. It doesn't take a Marshall scholar to know you do not chose a winner take all parliamentary form of government for a nation racked by sectarian violence, or to know that during a war on terror it is madness to elect a vice president with serious heart trouble. I fear that the current model of supposed meritocracy in America is anything but. We have systematically replaced apprenticeship with costly education affordable by only the wealthy few. We have striven to segregate the intellectual elite from anyone from different culture or different economic background. They are never challenged or humbled. This is very dangerous in a world where history is made by the Archie Bunker's and John Bulls of the world, not the pampered elite. Even the Titans of business are generally of average or slightly below average intelligence. I wonder if Ms. Applebaum would write with such breezy carelessness if she had spent her youth as a gofer at the Washington Post rather than at Oxford.