01-22-2017, 07:51 PM
(01-22-2017, 04:12 PM)taramarie Wrote: I take it your response to me pbrower is an add on to what i was saying? Because i feel it should be directed at Gale who seems to respect Russia for some unknown reason.
......and hell yeah not bad. 98 out of 100. Not bad not bad. We can do better.
It was a response to something that you posted, even if that was a response to Galen.
Fully aware that what I say is not scientific, I too respect some aspects of Russia -- but those are cultural and scientific. They would be admirable if they were associated with any country. The Russian heritage in politics is sordid whether under the Tsars or the Communists. If the opulent splendor of the Romanov dynasty and the pharaonic gigantism of the giant projects of Stalin awe me, I at least know what was behind them. The opulent splendor of the tsars was possible only through the severe exploitation of the serfs; the superhuman projects of Stalin could exist only under a regime that could disregard the human cost. Yes, American plutocrats could buy seemingly anything that they wanted at times, and American government agencies could build gigantic public works culminating in the Interstate Highway System. Big projects in the United States always had some respect for cost and benefit; either they had some payback assumed by users or a profit motive. Thus Hoover Dam, the bridges across the lower Hudson and Delaware Rivers, most sport stadiums, the Hoover Dam, and the Big Dig. The Interstate Highway system has paid for itself in reductions in highway fatalities and crippling injuries from vehicle crashes.
But back to Russia: Vladimir Putin seems to admire both Imperial Russia for opulent splendor (he can't get enough of it) and the pharaonic gigantism of Stalinist show projects. Perhaps having been a KGB chief (obviously not a good environment for promoting empathy toward anyone) he can be blinded to both the dehumanizing tendencies of both Imperial and Soviet Russia. A wise and humane person like Barack Obama can see beneath the surface. Donald Trump, a man of intellectual and moral hollowness, gets the awe but no sense of human tragedy (I need not go into the details); Vladimir Putin can snow him. Maybe Vladimir Putin saw someone that he could use. (I see that as a miscalculation; it is far safer to make dealings with someone who has a moral compass, because someone with a moral compass has an eye to the interests of people other than those making the deals).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.