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Samizdata quote of the day – decadence vs. depravity Russia can’t even offer any hope to Russians, let alone to anybody else. Russia today combines an authoritarian political system with aggressive ethno-nationalism and disastrous levels of corruption. The state suppresses or co-opts every expression of civil society, and the all-pervasive corruption relentlessly corrodes the natural moral sense of the individual. Lying, cheating and stealing becomes the norm, and anybody who tries to fight it gets crushed. Eventually, people forget how to live in any other way. The West is decadent but Russia is depraved.
– Commenter Andrew Z
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I don’t know how much I agree with this. I know a few Russians and certainly I wouldn’t characterize them the way you do. Of course two isn’t a very large sample size, but I am not sure what your data source is. I think it is worth considering that nothing the news media says about Russia should be trusted at all. They have a huge agenda.
But let’s consider the criticisms you have of Russia and compare them to the United States (feel free to apply to your country):
* An authoritarian political system — that’s what we have. Basically a single party with almost indistinguishable policies, and when an outsider somehow manages to sneak through (Trump for example) the full immune system of the deep state goes into hyperdrive. State sponsored censorship, disarmament of the population, treating criminals like victims and victims like criminals. I could go on and on.
* Ethno-nationalism — we don’t have that so much here, but we have a more insidious form — a victimhood competition to see which race, group or intersectional category can wring the most guilt and tribute from the productive class (and to be clear, there are many productive BIPOCs, LGBTQI+ people of course who succeed on their merits. Those whom I know are even more disgusted by the behavior of the intersectional Nazis. In a sense we have to opposite, ethno and national self loathing.
* Disastrous levels of corruption — our current president and his family have apparently taken bribes from the Chinese, the Russians, and everybody else who will pony up. And that corruption goes to every level of government. To use my favorite example — the most expensive engineering project in history, the F35 fighter jet has at least one of its parts made in 90% of American congressional districts. And don’t even get me started on the education system and the news media.
We still have this idea of the great Western powers. But that is gone. Western countries (at least the USA) are to all intents and purposes corrupt oligarchies with a police state whose growth is outstripped only by the growth of our home grown brownshirts.
One need only look at the news headlines today, and over the past two years to make you realize that banana republic would be a generous description.
So I’d say people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
The state suppresses or co-opts every expression of civil society, and the all-pervasive corruption relentlessly corrodes the natural moral sense of the individual. Lying, cheating and stealing becomes the norm, and anybody who tries to fight it gets crushed.
Oh, and let me add — which of these statements is not ABUNDANTLY true of the United States?
Eventually, people forget how to live in any other way.
Here in the United States it is perfectly normal to say that all white people are racist, or a pestilence, or that kindergarteners should be taught about sex, or subjected to drag queens, or that people who break into stores and steal stuff are just getting “reparations”, or that if you disagree with my politics you deserve to be put in jail (and perhaps a bit more rarely, that you deserve to die.) Not only are these normal things to say, but NOT saying them can result in your social destruction and ostracization, and possibly jail time.
What passes for civil society in America in 2023 would have been considered a hyperbolic dystopian novel in 2019. Nobody in 2019 would have thought it ok to subject first graders to drag queens in public schools, or for DAs to say that stealing less than $900 worth of stuff means they won’t charge you, or that the government should be directly involved in censoring the press, or that the government would lock people in their houses and shut down all businesses, and nobody would disagree, or that California could propose giving all black residents (in a state that never had slavery) $5,000,000 in reparations. (Yeah, five million each — I’m not making that up.) Nobody would have thought that in 2019. Now it is common place, in fact it is almost hate speech to disagree. (Oh, and in 2019, nobody thought that “hate speech” would ever be considered a crime in the land of the first amendment. If you told people that “speech is violence”, never mind “silence is violence” to an American in 2019, they would look at you as if you had just arrived from Mars, or Russia, or Zimbabwe.
Russia is a terrible place, but so is the land of the free and home of the brave. Putin is a horrible tyrant, but the tyranny of the American system is definitely in the same league.
Oh, and BTW for all you Brits, according to Konstantin Kisin, who is generally a pretty reliable source, a few hundred people were thrown in jail in Russia last year for criminal social media posts. In Britain, with a third of the population, the number was just shy of 3500.
Like I say. Glass houses.
You’re just mad that Johnson won today. 😉
(Who would have thought that Lightbringer was too conservative and law-and-order for Chicago?)
LOL. Disastrous levels? No, that is what happens in places like Nigeria or… Russia, as ‘disastrous’ corruption catastrophically derails projects as a matter of course & creates Potemkin institutions (the Russian military for example). US levels of corruption are merely cost-additive and scandalous (& scandalous means it causes scandal rather than helpless shrugs). Whilst the the F-35 is an unedifying tale, it had a happy ending as it is now the hands-down most effective fighter in service today (& in service in considerable & growing numbers). Disastrous levels of corruption? Now do the Sukhoi Su-57 saga: that is what “disastrous” levels of corruption looks like.
You are comparing the flu with plague. Magnitude matters. My data source come from knowing a great many more than two Russians (actual Russians not immigrant assimilated Russians operating within a western cultural & political context). My data comes from reading mainstream Russian publications aimed at Russians and seeing non-figurative genocide discussed as a desirable state policy. My data come from spending time in Eastern Europe & Ukraine, knowing people who have worked for years in modern Russia.
The SQOTD is spot on.
I am afraid that is abject nonsense and I sincerely doubt it is what Kisin actually claimed. A bit of googling suggests it comes from a 2019 interview where Kisin says 3300 people were ARRESTED not prosecuted, never mind jailed under the Malicious Communications Act. This has been used to criminalise people for saying things on social media but it is also covers harassment and stalking by email or social media and attempts to groom children for sex. I suspect the number of people actually jailed in the UK for saying the wrong thing is a tiny handful.
Your post is typical of the defeatist hysteria which bedevils some right wingers in the US and Europe. You are unhappy with the state of your own nation so you believe any propaganda against it and then fetishise ‘depraved states’ like Russia, a brutal, vodka-soaked kleptocratic hole.
@Fraser and @Perry
To try to make peace, perhaps we could agree that Fraser was being a little hyperbolic but that the slippery slope is there and we in the US and the UK are not at the top of it?
I could add my own experience of Russian nationals-many more than two, but all are academics or students so probably not very representative.
The students are interesting in that many have clearly some patriotic feeling and are very happy when I point out the amazing achievements of Russian probabilists but, I suspect, are not very happy with the motherland.
Replace Russia with the UK, the US and OZ for starters and that sentence is still true.
Perry,
The F-35 the best fighter in the World? Seriously? It is too slow, lacks supercruise, has a limited A-A capability, low G-capability for the B & C models. No gun on the B or C. Leaving aside the B’s STOVL capacity it has just two tricks. The first is it’s highly integrated sensors (OK, that’s good) and the second is stealth… Stealth ain’t new and I would not be surprised if the F-35’s stealth is already a little out-dated and stunned if it wasn’t utterly irrelevant by 2030-2035. It is also a lot of money for what is in many ways a mediocre aircaft. Is it a better plane than, say, a SAAB Grippen? Probs but the Grippen is a lot cheaper. Perhaps most damning of all is the creation of the F-15EX. The F-35 was meant to replace the F-15! A lot of F-15s are going to be replaced by… F-15s! That is like replacing F-86 Sabres with souped-up P-51 Mustangs. The F-35 is not a bad plane and kudos to the team for achieving the almost miraculous maintainance of a fairly high level of commonality between the three types. Something that the likes of the P1154 and F-111B utterly failed at. So, top marks for actually managing to get this chimera into service. Whether it was ever the best option is another matter. I suspect not but the program was conceived as quite simply too big to fail and deliberately with no plan B.
This portrayal of Russia sounds like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia or most of the other big cities in the United States. These American cities are truly “depraved” – dominated by government and Credit Bubble “economics”, totally corrupt and with society in such a state of decline that it is turning into collapse.
However, if one goes out from those big American cities one finds honest rural areas and small towns filled with decent people and where government (and corruption) is limited.
If one goes out of the corrupt cities in Russia – one finds corrupt rural areas (for example most land in Russia is still state owned or collectively owned – like the Indian Reservations in the United States).
It was Alexander Solzhentisyn who said that perhaps the worst crime of the Marxists in Russia was their destruction of the Russian village (of independent Russian rural life) – for a thousand years (even in periods of serfdom) the Russian village was basically sound, but the Marxists destroyed it – broke the back of Russian society and culture.
As Russians have themselves told me “remember we are not the descendants of those Russians who stood up heroically against Marxism – we are the descendants of the people who murdered them”.
Still humans are beings – we have free will, so I will not “write off” Russians yet – there may be improvement over time.
And those two things are exactly why F-35 wins when used as part of the integrated system it is designed to operate within.
In fairness to FO, yesterday was a depressing day for conservatives across the US. It was election day in several important spots – including Chicago – for important positions.
We didn’t do well.
This period of time all feels very much like the run-up to Barack Obama’s second election. There was a feeling that the people had had enough, that they saw through the haze and were going to change tack. There was optimism, as there is now. But then Obama won, by a significant margin. Rather crushing.
The elections yesterday were another painful wake-up indication that the US remains Obama’s US. In one election, Chicago’s grotesque mayor was replaced – by someone far more leftist and woke.
MPAI.
(While we lack our own Smaug-like Putin in the US, we’re certainly on a glide path to our own lawless mob-ocracy. It’s going to be a hard decade coming up here.)
(ETA: Just as an indicator – a CNN poll today says that 60%+ of American voters think the new Trump indictment is justified. Again, MPAI.)
@Perry de Havilland (London)
You are comparing the flu with plague. Magnitude matters.
If you think the situation in the USA is as benign as the flu, I’m afraid I must respectfully disagree. The problem is that people see the shadow of what the USA used to be and think it is still like that. But it isn’t. The situation in the USA has drastically collapsed in the past three years.
Right now the main opposition party leader was just arrested on trivial charges and is threatened with 130 years in jail. It puts a whole new meaning on the expression “trumped up charges”. The indictment didn’t even say what the felony crime was. The press are almost without exception mouth pieces of the government. I mean that is Ukrainian level corruption. Our elections more and more a sham every day. These things they do in Russia. But you know what they don’t do? The President of the United States, leader of the free world, is probably is a Chinese asset. The evidence of his deep compromise is legion, but buried by every possible outlet.
And in Russia do they take little girls and cut off their breasts and cut of the penises of little boys? And do they, should a parent dare to stand up to this (if the parent even knows what is going on) do they use child welfare laws to vacate their parental rights? Possibly sending them to jail? Do they seriously consider putting a biological male double rapist into a women’s prison?
I’ll grant you that they are not equal, but there are definitely ways that the Russians are worse than the US. But there is a level of burgeoning depravity in the US not present in Russia that is hard to measure.
@bobby b
You’re just mad that Johnson won today.
Not sure if mad is the right word. Resigned might be better description. But it, and the Wisconsin, result just go to further demonstrate what I have said here many times. The problem is not the politicians. It is the people who are too stupid to vote in their own self interest. And that is not something any election is going to change. On the contrary, it’ll amplify it.
I’d distill that a bit more. I think they DO try to vote in their self-interest. Problem is, they prefer the safety and security of being vassals – fed by lords – over the idea of risking anything based on their own efforts. They’re going to eat next year’s seed corn now, because it’s in their immediate and comfortable self-interest, and someone else somewhere will make sure that it all works out. They just can’t accept the idea that it just doesn’t work that way.
I like Ayn Rand’s view of them:
“You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.”
People fear justice. Justice is cold and uncaring. Mercy just sounds so . . . nice. Warm. Forgiving. Woke.
Most People Are Idiots.
@Marius
I am afraid that is abject nonsense and I sincerely doubt it is what Kisin actually claimed. A bit of googling suggests it comes from a 2019 interview where Kisin says 3300 people were ARRESTED not prosecuted
And that’s ok? Here is a link to Kisin’s comments on this. I think he frames it very well and gives a terrifying example.
If you think getting arrested and not prosecuted is not a big deal, I must respectfully disagree. Although it is better for the person involved it is much worse for the country — because then it is a case of the police bullying, threatening and violating people without having to answer or justify their actions to the legal system. It casts a shadow over people’s rights without even the ability to challenge the police for their actions.
bobby b – Chicago was a choice between two Democrats, the voters (or rather the votes – not always the same thing as the voters) choose the worst one – but the other Democrat was hardly wonderful.
Chicago is hopeless – people who can leave should leave, selling whatever they have in the City for whatever they can get for it.
The Wisconsin judicial election was far more depressing – the vast international campaign (including our dear friends the “Classical Liberal”, “free market”, Economist magazine) to hand over the Supreme Court of Wisconsin to the radical left was successful (at least in terms of votes – again we do not know if it was successful in terms of voters).
Internationally the forces of evil (and it is no exaggeration to call them that) are celebrating.
However, economic law is real – and it will not forever be denied.
This despicable economic “Cronyism” system will fall – and the institutionalised political corruption system will fall with it.
New York City will be “Ground Zero” of this international collapse.
Those corrupt juries who boast that they convict people knowing that they are innocent of any real crime (such as the man they convicted a few days ago for telling a “vote Hillary by text” joke in 2016) will get what they deserve. Economic and social collapse.
They have brought it upon their own heads. My sympathy is with the minority (and sadly it is a minority) of just people in New York City and other such places – who do not deserve what is going to happen to them.
Sadly when the economy and society fall apart, the innocent suffer – not just the guilty.
Indeed some of the most guilty of all – the Wall Street Credit Bubble types (Jamie Dimon and other such “let us take private land by force – we need to because of errr, Climate Change, or something” filth) are unlikely to suffer at all – they will be far away from the vast Credit Bubble cities of the Western World when they collapse.
That is the way of things in this fallen world – some of the most guilty people do not suffer the consequences of what they have done.
“But what of London – is it not almost as much a Credit Bubble as New York City?”
London is not as bad – but, yes, its economic foundation is rotten.
“Lying, cheating and stealing becomes the norm, and anybody who tries to fight it gets crushed.”
????
“becomes” ??
When was it ever different in Russia? Under the murderous Communists which practiced mass murder and enslavement?
Russia is what it is. Never was anything else. Same for most other countries in the World.
bobby b, re MPAI. At first blush, I agree. But looking for some old fashioned Christian charity towards idiots, I’d say “most people have not been taught well”. Not by their parents, their Church (some exceptions of course) and sure as hell not by public schools. So can we blame them for voting for things that to us are obvious disasters? On one level, yes, we can blame them for their vote because it hurts us all. But what to do about it?
We either try to take the systems (education mostly) back or we fortify the perimeter walls.