Replies

A mesmerized Yeltsin wandered the isles, marveled at price-scanning registers he had no idea even existed -while taking his free in-store samples of cheese, etc and remarking how if ordinary Russians knew about America's horn-of-plenty 'there would be a revolution'. He added that the Soviet Politburo -with their special import shops/privileges- and not even Gorbachev have access to such variety as the average American did. Later a biographer wrote that subsequent to the grocery store visit, Yeltsin was actually shocked -and depressed- for a while about what he saw at Randall's that day- he just couldn't get the experience off his mind, especially when contrasted with the meagre offerings his 'potentially rich' USSR -with it's contempt for the retail sector- could manage....

....As Reagan once said, if he could just have the opportunity meet with the average Ivan (and his family) and show them how Americans truly lived, and our actual standard of living -not what the USSR told them- he felt his point would be made, and perhaps the Cold War resolved.

And now we have a president who doesn't want America to be exceptional.

Exceptional? Today’s NYT thinks we’re the pits.

Yet let’s get real. All this hasn’t benefited all Americans. A newly released global index finds that America falls short, along with other powerful countries, on what matters most: assuring a high quality of life for ordinary citizens.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/opinion/nicholas-kristof-enjoying-the-low-life.html

--back during the Nixon years-(early '70's, Leadville, Colorado was on of the stops on a transcontinental bus trip of mid-level Russian bureaucrats , husbands and wives (the USSR had started letting trusted people out without hostages at home)--

--I have always been convinced that trips like that infected, so to speak , the Russian government with people who had seen that there was a world out there better than what they had---