>
> BTW Chris, I must thank you for your reports on contemporary life in
> Russia; it's a perspective that we back here in US Nirvana, where life
> couldn't be better in any respect whatsoever (especially with all our
> electronic doohickies and self-filling washing machines and what-not),
> don't often get. I know very well how easy it is for Americans to get
> highly distorted views of the rest of the world (and of course it works
> just as easily in reverse). Having had some experience living in Japan,
> the image of that country I see in the US media often makes me shake my
> head, though it has gotten a bit better in recent years.
>
>
> Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
Thanks Jon.
Oh, it doesn't matter what things are actually like in Russia. People don't care. Russia serves as a great empty space people can project their fantasies upon. E.g. in the 90s the Western left loved to jump on the "Russia is disintegrating" bandwagon because it gave them an opportunity to say "capitalism killed Russia!" Once the economy started booming, Russia disappeared from their radar screen except for Chechnya ("ooh! Evil Russian imperialism!"). Those darn uncooperative Russians, how dare they refuse to collapse and spoil my morality play.
>From another angle, after 12 years, several civil wars and a 10-year drop in male life expectancy, mainstream Western reporters can't bring themselves to look at the 800-pound feces-throwing gorilla jumping up and down in front of them and say "the fall of the Soviet Union was bad."