I'm 100% on the side of Ukraine, but

[Igel]

23. That's a very Soviet attitude.

You can't trust anybody, so that means you can ignore everything.

I've seen that adduced for Russian societal polls. "Russians are apathetic." (Not "pathetic." Well, that's *their* claim.)

Say one thing ("Yes, Ukrainians fascists, Russian soldiers virtuous&quot , think one thing ("you're an effing dork-pollster, and that khyilo in charge&quot , do another ("Yes, sir, I'll have that report on how profitable the business is tomorrow, sir.&quot

This isn't a socialist approach. It's a totalitarian approach where the totalitarian-in-chief requires not just outward compliance but attempts for ideological compliance. (That ain't Hitler. Mao? Stalin? Oh, yeah. Obedience isn't enough.)


Earlier somebody tried to draw a bright line between Soviet communism and Soviet socialism; there isn't one. the USSR wasn't communist in practice, it was communist in belief. They were *building towards* communism, they were building *socialism." Socialism was a good thing, they said, where the means of production were owned, maintained and run by the state. In communism--at least a couple of generations away in 1990--the state would wither and the means would be distributed, each person willingly working towards only the common good and the government reduced to a minor role of records keeping. They never explained how that would work, minus world revolution, but it was a belief, after all. "I'm a communist," a Stalinist-Russian acquaintance said, stating her beliefs. She believed herself a democrat. And she regretted the collapse of socialist. Because from Lenin to Gorbachov they were building socialism to reach communism, but always deepening democracy. They had other mental illnesses, but those don't matter here.

(Their definition of democracy is not the traditional US definition. Theirs was a "managed democracy" or "militant democracy"--a system run by a few ostensibly to benefit and train the "demos", not so much rule by the mob or rule by the people as rule for the people, rouseable into a mob on command. When you see anybody say that the majority are idiots and need to be taught or corrected, *that* is your model for those claimants. The US in 1820 had slaves, but in a majoritarian democracy where 50% + 1 like that idea, slavery is utterly democratic if 50% + 1 of the voters think it is. Reprehensible? Sure. The alternative is a representational democracy. I think that majoritarian democracy = mob rule in a suit and tie. Because slavery.)