28.1.12
I just heard the latest news from the 2012 presidential political circus in America. Allegedly Romney said that he'd consider Vladimir Putin a threat to global (or maybe just national) security if Putin wins the Russian presidential elections in about five weeks. I find that a rather dumb thing to say, especially since Putin is slated to win. I've long since understood a sentiment not particular to Russians, but people I believe to be all over the world outside of America, that Americans might do better if they didn't stick their nose in other people's business.
To be fair, few people I know really like Putin as a politician, many think he's a criminal, some would go so far as to support his execution if the right opposing party were to come to power, but the fact is, Russians might think that of their President, Prime minister and ruling party no matter who they happen to be. You'd think Americans would be able to understand that sort of antipathy towards national leaders. But there's another side to all the recent talk about falsified elections and Putin's horrible policies, a side that western media probably doesn't take into account, namely, that Putin, believe it or not, remains extremely popular, and that he owes a least a little of his popularity to political action in service of the Russian people - that is, of course, the right Russian people; the people who have helped keep him in power. But that form of political action is nothing foreign to the west.
What Americans might have trouble understanding is how, merely by doing what every other politician does, one man can remain so popular for so long. After four years of one guy or another, approximately half of Americans are ready for a change, as though it's time to put on spring clothing again. That sort of political moodiness just hasn't come to the Russian Federation yet. Maybe it will in the future, but probably not as soon as next month. As a matter of fact, part of me thinks that these protests about Putin's policies might blow up in the face of the protesters. While there are people in Russia who haven't been voting because they don't see the point, since their enemy Putin would win anyway, there are also people who haven't been voting because their friend Putin would win anyway. The coming election might see a record turn out, and Putin may win by a landslide, even by Russian standards. And if that happens, Clinton and Romney will be shout and scream about the lack of real democracy in Russia. The funny thing is, they will be completely wrong. It will be democracy. The people will have chosen, and if their choice is the same as it's been for the past fifteen years, so be it.
The American's are right, it won't be American democracy, with the long-awaited about-face in the ruling political party, but why should it be? I guess we get upset because America was supposed to be the city on the hill, and everyone was supposed to love and emulate us. Countries have done that, with and without our 'help,' but when a country up and behaves as we perceive to be undemocratically, we as Americans can't help but be a little indignant.
Of course, I may be completely off when I say that Putin will win by a landslide. In the back of many people's minds, mine and maybe Putin's most of all, we can't help but wonder how much election fraud might have helped his party, United Russia, in elections up to the ones last December. I presume lots of people will have a close eye on the coming Presidential elections to make sure eveything is done correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if regardless how authenticallly the elections proceed, people claim to have observed ballot-box stuffing, or to have been forbidden to vote on the evening of the election.
Getting back to what Romney said, I just heard it again (I've had dinner since writing the above), and I can confirm the 'global.' He must have been talking about global threats to American security as opposed to threats to the globe, although I wonder if Russians will understand it that way. Romney also expressed his opinion that Putin will, by winning the Presidency again, place himself among the ranks of the President of Iran. I find his comment disturbing, especially considering the somewhat hostile relationship between Iran and the U.S. You'd like to think that Romney is just talking tough for whomever he wants to please on the campaign trail, but you could've thought the same about Bush when he started talking about the Axis of Evil (except Bush introduced that club after being elected, I think). And while you may argue that Bush was a complete idiot while Romney may at least have some brains, you have to understand that the rest of the world might not see it that way. Russians sometimes can't tell the difference between Obama and Bush, which, depsite how much your bubble of hope may have burst after realizing our President was human, you have to admit is quite a stretch. So now here's Romney, the next goon from the Republican party - that's how Russians will see him if he wins the nomination (they'll look at Gingrich that way too, and perhaps more rightly so!) - saying that Russia is a threat to global security. Most Russians will bite their tongue while thinking about global events of the past ten years, and many won't be too shy to pose the question: if there were a global survey, how many people would consider the biggest threat to global security America? In Russia at least, probably very many.
Sure, America is kind enough to grant rogue nations of the world the right to exist, but we'll sanction the hell out of them if they don't behave like we say they should. Or, if our president isn't a wimpy democrat, we'll wage war on the falsely warranted grounds of preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Well, since Iraq has been dealt with, I guess today there's an opening in the Axis of Evil, and Russia is in the running.
So Putin is as bad as the President or Iran? Was there not enough hostility already? Are Americans lacking nations to threaten and be threatened by? As a society that supports such jingoist politicians, Americans resemble the most insecure bully, pumping iron at the gym, that is, pumping billions of dollars into the military, to be the biggest kid on the block. I wonder if there are any topics in sociology about how societies resemble individual people. By looking at what these politicians, these representatives of American society, say, we can understand the common American school bully. He's insecure as hell, afraid of everyone, and always looking for enemies.
The last news I heard in America was at an airport, in New York I think. Obama was giving an announcement at the pentagon about financial cuts to the military, so many hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades. I've heard about his decision since, and am happy about it. It's a step, allbeit a small one, in a right direction. After getting just within earshot of Romney's and Gingrich's potential foreign policy, for the sake of the world I hope Obama stays President. Of course, that's not to say there aren't better people, but he's the lesser of two evils, which is what most Americans vote for (that's the democracy that Russians haven't come to practice yet).
But isn't Ron Paul intriguing sometimes? Sure, he'll dismantle the national government, but he won't spare the military, like his Republican colleagues. I find that enticing. You can't blame me for warming up to him, I mean, everybody agrees that I won't be getting any social security or medicare by the time I'm eligible, so what's it to me if they get scrapped? (Or in case they do get tossed, should I then have to take care of my parents? Ha! Good luck, mom!) Regarding the biggest threat to global security, am I wrong to think that Ron Paul, if posed that question, might brazingly answer America? Not a small part of me would agree with him.

1.2.12
Last weekend I repeated a walk that I had done first on the previous weekend. I should have waited a few more weeks before repeating it, since it wasn't nearly as glorious as the first time. I got off the metro at a station called Tioply Stan. Tioply means warm, Stan apparently has many meanings, ranging rougly from torso, to machine, to the position of enemy forces in a battle. In any case, this station is probably at the furthest southern location around Moscow that I've visited yet. I went there because there were supposed to be a few dollar stores in the area; also it seemed like it wouldn't be difficult to reach central Moscow by foot, despite the ten kilometer (about six mile) distance from downtown. On the first trip, I found one of the dollar stores, and it turned out to be a goldmine for audiobooks. I ended up buying seven of them, mostly classical literature by authors like Tolstoy and Gorky.
As I left that market and reached the avenue corner where I was to turn north for my six mile walk, I was astounded by the view to the south. Beyond the few small stores that stood there in the meager hope of attracting a few customers from the giant mall across the street where I stood, there was nothing. For the first time since my arrival last August, I could see territory seemingly untouched by man. Far off too the invisible south must be Rostov on the Don somewhere, and it seemed nothing lie in between. It was cold that first day I went there, and the smog was lower and not as active as it would be on a less cold day. The mid afternoon sun was going to set within two and a half hours, so if I wanted to reach a metro station on my gray line by foot, I'd have to hurry. I passed a few interesting stores, two bookstores, one had a metallic swiveling shelf of audiobooks standing in view from outside, another was an as of yet uncharted branch of the House of Books. I also passed an Ashan I had never been to before. But on that first day, the light was limited, and I didn't feel like seeing new things in the dark, so I hurried as much as I could.
Eventually I came to an intersection, down one avenue of which Moscow State University could be clearly seen. I had been there before, so I didn't turn, but continued in the same direction, crossed the avenue and found myself before a monument whose meaning I couldn't understand at first. It had the face of an asian man centered on a huge circular piece of bronze-colored metal, like a giant coin the size of a mac truck. It was mounted on a square piece of the same metal, on the front side of which stood written: "There's nothing of more worth than freedom and independence." Can you guess who that asian man was? It seems those words were a quote of his. I don't know much about him, except that he's a well-known historical figure who evidentally had a lot to do with communism in Asia (but maybe I'm misleading you already - I know so little about the history of communism and of Asia). But judging from what I think I know about communism in Asia, these words strike me as a little ironic. I mean, I heard from someone who had been to China recently that the government there wasn't too keen on freedom and independence. Maybe the man's saying just didn't stick.
I continued walking, but didn't reach familiar territory before the sun had more or less gone down. It was rather dark when I reached the Ashan branch on Gagarin Square. I stopped there for a pit stop (the cold really makes you have to pee), and continued on in a direction I hadn't explored before. I suspected that a nearby avenue would lead to a place I knew well, and tried not to vear too far from this avenue, while staying on a road I had never walked along before. My sense of direction didn't fail me, even in the dark. I walked by the Don Monastary, a rather large and probably tourist infested fortress, which was admittedly very peaceful in that evening hour. I eventually reached a square I had visited many times before, where a giant statue of Lenin stands, with a small army of bolsheviks at his feet. Across from the monument there's the metro station Oktyaberski, that is, the October station, a name which certainly has some historical significance connected with one revolution or another. A metro station on the gray line wasn't far off. I reached it after getting slightly lost in an underground passageway, and went home for the day.

4.2.12
There were a bunch of rallies today, four of them in fact, but unfortunately I didn't make it to any one of them. By the time I reached swamp square, where the protest against the election results of last December had taken place, and where another rally for the same people had been planned for today, I quickly realized that I had arrived a little late, since hardly a soul was left on the square. I can't say I blame them, for as I walked across the deserted square, a cold wind robbed me of any body heat I might have held in my several layers of winter clothing.
The stage was on the opposite end of the square from where it had been a few months before. There were a few people there taking things apart, but besides them there were hardly any passers-by, just people, like myself, thinking of the next warm place to escape to. I turned a corner and went to the Red Square from the south, with a good view of what I call the Wanka cathedral. I stopped at the mall on the Red Square, and continued towards a very nice touristy street, called Arbat, where allegedly there was a branch of the dollar store, something which I kind of doubted, since I'd traversed the street so many times before. If there was indeed a branch there, then it would have to have been hidden somewhere down one of the numerous side alleys, but as I reached number 44 Arbat, I found to my surprise the store not hidden in any corners, but with an entrance right onto the street. There wasn't a big sign, however, except what anyone could've mistaken for a mere advertisement, an old torn one at that, on the door to the store, so I can see how I'd walked by without noticing it up to today. The store didn't have any audiobooks or dark chocolate. I was rather disappointed. I guess my wallet was itching, so I bought some dishsoap and tea, then left.

Getting back to what Mitt Romney allegedly said about Putin, I guess the statement reminded me of my theory about people needing enemies, because last week I gave standard material on the subject to my upper-intermediate class, namely a part of the first chapter of "1984" where Winston describes the daily Hate Speech at work. I've given this excerpt to students before, and I don't think they liked it, if they understood it. Why would I give such a hate-filled description of some fantasy world? The answer is that, in regards to the excerpt as well as to the novel as a whole, the reader can always wonder just how fantastic, or not, Winston's world really is.
If Romney did indeed say what I heard on one of Big Brother's Russian radio news stations, then I'm almost at a loss for words. Whether he was expressing his own personal view or just catering to some general Republican perception, I don't understand why an individual or an entity would want to spoil the relatively positive relations with an important country. What's the advantage to making more enemies?
One answer that might pop up in the minds of any liberal and formerally hippy readership I might enjoy involves the pentagon. It's to their advantage: they like making new enemies, because then they'll have someone to bomb, or at least an excuse to make bombs, like in the cold war. The title of the Department of Defense is so Orwellian it makes me want to vomit. The Department gives itself meaning by fostering war, so its political party has no reason to shy away from behaving like the toughest bully on the block.
That's actually the only answer that popped into my head. Reading myself, I fear I come across as a bit of a conspiracy-theory nutcase. Maybe I've spent too much of my life in California. But as long as I'm in the hippy mood, I can divulge some real groovy revelations that I've had recently. Being a hippy is all about spreading love (and weed), right? Expressing things in these terms, you could say that this phenomenon of people needing enemies is a desire to hate something. People love to hate and hate to love.
The hippies had it the other way around, they loved loving and hated hating, but after a short analysis of loving loving and hating hating, I've come to the conclusion that such a position is impossible. It's a yin-yang thing. Surely even the most devoted hipes hated something, if nothing else, then those who didn't want to spread enough love and weed. As a matter of fact, it seems that you can't have love without hate, nor hate without love. If someone tried loving absolutely everyone, they might go insane, or they'd at least lose track of their conception of what love is. It's psychological physics. Every action has an opposing reaction, every positive - a negative.
So maybe I should thank the Republican party for fostering so much hate towards other members of the globe. After all, more hate leaves room for more love, and who are we as Americans going to love more? You guessed it: ourselves! Hallelujah and God Bless the Pentagon!