Russia, as far as I've been watching, is a very strange, uncomfortable place right now, for all its "We're lovely" posturing. (Oof, those campaign commercials. They make me cringe.) Journalist killing. Exploding "the mother of all bombs," apparently. Really shouldering into international politics, where they basically hadn't been for a while. I can't help but find Putin a bit scary, given Russia's history (granted, they have every right and reason to be a paranoid bunch).
Gorbachev and Yeltsin had some good ideas, but Putin is pretty popular because, well, people can eat now. (Also, there's that whole flag-waving resurgence of national identity thing going on.)
It's sort of like how I'd been vaguely watching France's election, half-betting that they were going to elect an openly fascist president. (They didn't, but given how crazy Le Pen looked, other candidates could get away with leaning a lot more Right and not looking that extreme by comparison.)
There's a couple places that are gradually going barmy, and nobody seems to be paying the slightest bit of attention.
To me, those commercials reverberate with 1984, which is a scary, scary thought. The sense I got of Gorbachev and Yeltsin seemed a lot less slimy and a lot more sane-- but I also don't know much Russian history.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin had some good ideas, but Putin is pretty popular because, well, people can eat now. (Also, there's that whole flag-waving resurgence of national identity thing going on.)
It's sort of like how I'd been vaguely watching France's election, half-betting that they were going to elect an openly fascist president. (They didn't, but given how crazy Le Pen looked, other candidates could get away with leaning a lot more Right and not looking that extreme by comparison.)
There's a couple places that are gradually going barmy, and nobody seems to be paying the slightest bit of attention.
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