Kerry privately urges Poroshenko to provide evidence of Kremlin involvement with separatists in Ukra

[JackRiddler]

63. Informative & appreciated

Many Western writers are selectively blind to the unfortunate reality that Putin is popular in Russia, and the Communists and nationalists are the opposition, and somewhere down below are the liberals the West likes, who are seen as having failed miserably, fairly or not. It's unfortunate, but it's a lot like the U.S. under Nixon -- he was a dirty crook and cheated in the elections but he didn't actually need to do this, especially not in 1972. And given the absolute disasters of the Yeltsin years, the insane failures of Harvard-planned shock therapy, the creation of the oligarchs and mafias through privatization, the assault on the parliament in 1993, the first Chechen war, the meltdowns of the late 1990s -- it's not so surprising that you should see this kind of reaction and desire for a strongman. And they fall for a lot of authoritarian horrors, repression against gays, racial minorities, journalists, artists. But smart, liberal Western writers think Pussy Riot and Kasparov are a serious opposition, when these are an unwelcome joke to most Russians, like the hippies were to the U.S. majority in 1972. And as long as what they're offering is a different oligarchy (Pussy Riot endorsed Khodorkovsky, for fuck's sake), it's not like they are in any way a progressive alternative. It sucks.