Recommended: Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

I have mentioned before Angelo Codevilla’s persuasive argument that the central problem with all of the various schools of American foreign policy is that they all assume that other nations and other cultures think much as we do, have similar expectations and values, and will react as we would to threats and incentives. That is certainly clearly not true of Russia, which as Churchill once famously said “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”.

Peter Pomerantsev, who now lives in London, is of Russian extraction and spent a decade in Russia working as a writer and producer. His new book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, is a revealing look into Putin’s new Russia, part Tsarist empire, part Mafia gang, part surreal PR construct.  It is a well written book, almost lyrical in parts, but it is a very important book in light of Russia’s new aggressive stance in the world.

Russia, of course, is a wounded bear, perhaps even a mortally wounded bear. Its economy and its infrastructure are in shambles, massive corruption is endemic at all levels from the President himself to the lowest bureaucrat or policemen, and it faces a serious demographic decline with a rapidly aging population. President Putin or whomever replaces him will have to use extreme measures to maintain power amidst the decay and decline, and aggression toward the West will no doubt be a central feature for years or decades to come. Russia lacks the economic power to support a major war, but it is still quite capable of causing endless troubles along its own borders, and given its (historically understandable) paranoia about the West, will no doubt do so.

In the light of that, anything which helps us understand the differing world view of Russians is important, and that is why this book is important.

The mote in your eye…..

I have been thinking about the peoples of the world who have been sold unrealistic visions, mostly to their detriment. The Russian people, sold the idea that Putin is their great savior. The Jihadists sold the dream of dominating the world. The ludicrousness of some of these visions is so clear to those of us outside their influence. And yet…..and yet……

It makes me wonder what foolishness we Americans have bought; what Cool-Aid we have drunk.  What would an uninvolved outsider see about our visions?

We fancy ourselves a democracy, but really, if you think about it, our elections are a bit of a farce. Most voters don’t understand most of the issues, and many don’t even care. We never seem to vote for the real candidate, but rather vote for a gussied-up image created by professional image-makers, with media exposure financed by wealthy corporations, unions and/or special interest groups.  And as a result, we get fairly unimpressive leaders – ideological fanatics of the left or  right, or people who don’t even believe evidence (think the climate-change deniers). Why, for example, did we get convinced (and I fell for it too!) that a junior senator who never sponsored a single piece of legislation either in Congress or in his home state legislature, who never met a payroll or ran a business, who had no experience whatsoever in managing a legislature or even a small business, would be a good president? Because we bought the image.

We fancy ourselves the land of opportunity, but really, if you think about it, the country is essentially run by a small, wealthy, elite group of business leaders, Wall Street wheelers-and-dealers, politicians, and union bosses. The statistics on income inequality make that pretty clear. Some CEOs make 400+ times as much as their average employees. Some unions (such as some  teachers unions and police unions) are able to absolutely block any attempts at reform. Some big companies are able to get (buy) legislation and regulations and laws in place that absolutely shut out any competition (think Monsanto with its war on soybean seed producers – if the wind blows in pollen from their GMO plants in nearby fields, the law allows them to shut down an independent farmer and force him to buy their seed).

We fancy ourselves a land of laws, but really, if you think about it, in America the wealthy often get off with major crimes (because they can afford good lawyers), while the poor get jailed for minor crimes. We have more people in jail, per capita, than the authoritarian regimes like Russia and China and North Korea that we claim to despise. And our police, it has recently been revealed, have the power in many states to seize assets “on suspicion” without proof or even warrants, and have been using those seized assets to buy themselves equipment. Not to mention the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that have made the news recently.  Or the fact that we are using drones to kill militants in nations we are not even formally at war with.

It seems to me we need to do a bit of self-examination and soul-searching before we get so disdainful of those other poor fools who have been sold such a bill of goods.   

The CIA Interrogation Report

Some years ago the National Reconnaissance Office started to build a new headquarters building in Chantilly, Virginia. After a while it was revealed that the building was going to overrun its cost estimate by $2-$3 billion.  A couple of Senators made a big public deal of how this was outrageous, and how if they had known the NRO was going to build such a building they would have objected. BUT I happen to know that these very same Senators had been given a private tour of the half-finished building only a few months before (during which they admired the design), so in fact they had known about the building, and its cost overruns, all along. So their “outrage” was just public posturing.

The story comes to mind now because of the phony outrage from politicians (mostly Democrats) about the newly-released report from the Senate Intelligence Committee about CIA interrogation techniques. I say “phony” because just about everyone in Washington, and most people around the country,  have known about these techniques for some years now.  There have been numerous articles about it over the past decade, and a good bit of public debate about the morality of “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  So to suddenly get outraged about it now is just more public posturing – and perhaps an attempt from some politicians to distance themselves from the issue now that it is more public, though they kept quiet, or even supported the CIA, before all this got so much publicity.

There is no question that these techniques are immoral, and even more to the point, the evidence suggests that they didn’t produce much of any useful information. Professional interrogators (which these people apparently were not) know that the best results generally come from building a trusting relationship with the suspect, not from waterboarding them.  But they did probably generate more enemies for America, and lower our standing around the world.  We are hardly in a position to lecture authoritarian regimes on their human rights issues in the light of our own actions.

But this new public outrage over what everyone has known for years is just another disgusting case of hypocritical political theater - something we see far too much of from Washington these days.

Recommended: Why are these clowns winning? Secrets of the right-wing brain

Paul Rosenberg has written a wonderful piece in Salon entitled Why are these clowns winning? Secrets of the right-wing brain. This fascinating piece begins:

When George W. Bush became president in 2001, it marked the first time in 70 years that conservative Republicans controlled all three branches of government. By the time Bush left office, we were all reminded why. The financial crisis and resulting global economic meltdown Bush left us with were eerily reminiscent of the Great Depression, but there was also 9/11, the Iraq War and Katrina—a multifaceted record of spectacular failure so stunning that it should have disqualified conservative Republicans from holding power for at least another seven decades.  Yet, the Democrats’ political response to the many messes Bush left behind has been so spectacularly inept that they’ve not only lost both houses of Congress, they’ve also lost more state legislative seats than any time since before the Great Recession.

The answer he offers is complex - this is not a easy, partisan, sound-bite piece to understand, but it is worth it.

Recommended: What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel

I have noted repeatedly in recent months the obvious anti-Semitic bias of the world press and the UN, especially during the last Israel-Hamas war.  But perhaps there is more operating here than just antisemitism. Matti Friedman is a journalist (no doubt sympathetic to Israel), and his piece in the Atlantic Monthly What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel is a fascinating insight into how the world press gets its stories, and often gets them wrong.

It is worth reading this piece and pondering whether similar distortions are occurring in stories from elsewhere in the world..