The Land of Magical Thinking: Inside Putin’s Russia

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/land-magical-thinking-inside-putin%E2%80%99s-russia ^ | P. J. O'Rourke

[elhombrelibre]

This is the strangest book of note I have ever read. And that’s as it should be, since the subject is Russia, the strangest country of note I have ever visited.

Peter Pomerantsev has written the most bitter indictment of a nation’s politics and society going wrong since William Shirer’s 1941 Berlin Diary. Pomerantsev has also written a calm and incisive report on the current state of affairs in Russia. Yet it reads like a comedy of manners, a dark and grotesque comedy of manners, a State Department white paper co-authored by Evelyn Waugh and Franz Kafka. And not only that, but Nothing Is True is a bildungsroman, too.

Pomerantsev was born in the Soviet Union, though barely. His parents emigrated to England in 1978, when he was ten months old. He speaks Russian. He thought he was Russian. After college he went to Russia. And he spent nine years there discovering that, on points of honor and decency, he’s an English gentleman after all.

Pomerantsev becomes a reality TV producer in a place where, as his title and subtitle indicate, there isn’t any reality. Or, at least, everyone wishes there weren’t.

Soviet stagnation led to perestroika, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal euphoria, economic disaster, oligarchy, and the mafia state. How can you believe in anything when everything around you is changing so fast?

[leopardseal]

Russia's star is rising at present. The nation is under good and competent leadership; the "Russian cross" is gone (they now have a healthy birth rate and ratio of births to deaths); their economy is beginning to take off and western sanctions are having no effect; and they've just pulled half the planet's human population out of the clutches of the Rothschilds and transAtlantic monetary/banking cartel.

The country with leadership problems is us, not Russia.

NewsWeek: "What sanctions....."

[elhombrelibre]

Have you given any thought to living there, or, more likely, do you presently live there?

[canuck_conservative]

The nation is under good and competent leadership

Tiny Italy has a bigger economy than Russia, the world's biggest country.

Thanks for the comedy break.

[DB]

You are insane.

[leopardseal]

I’ll be staying in Texas for the foreseeable future but Russia wouldn’t be a bad place for somebody to live. The American people are swimming in an ocean of propaganda and BS.

[leopardseal]

I take it you’re happy with Barrack Hussein Obama as your supreme leader and commander and with people like Victoria Nuland and George Soros dictating US foreign policy...

[Popman]

———; and they’ve just pulled half the planet’s human population out of the clutches of the Rothschilds and transAtlantic monetary/banking cartel.-——

Can you explain?

[canuck_conservative]

Russia wouldn’t be a bad place for somebody to live

As long as you don't mind no freedom, no fresh food, and the fear of Putin's secret police kicking in your door in the middle of the night ... who wouldn't want THAT?!

[leopardseal]

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=brics+fortaleza&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[Kozak]

And the Russian people have vibrant and open media free of propaganda.
Except for all the murdered mad imprissoned of course.

Another FR Putana .

[cynwoody]

What time is where you are?

https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Earth

[Kozak]

I always love the false dichotomy fallacy.

” if you hate Putin you must love Obama “
Here you try one,

Have you stopped sodomizing the kids yet?

[leopardseal]

You’re the one who started this crap...

[canuck_conservative]

You’ll find that most Freepers here are nice, so nice that we won’t say anything about your sign-up date.

However, we also love freedom, for ourselves and others, which means you’ll find FR to be rather infertile soil for planting your Putin propaganda.

[nathanbedford]

As someone living in Germany hearing my neighbors, perhaps I can explain. What you are reading is rank anti-Semitism (note the reference to the Rothschilds) which is becoming more and more prevalent here. There is a very strong anti-American sentiment abroad in Germany, and I presume and the rest of Europe, which is tightly connected with a conspiratorial notion that the Jews are controlling international finance and they are working against the interests of the ordinary Europeans.

Putin is driving the wedge and Obama is widening the opening. The entire Atlantic alliance is in jeopardy and I believe that Obama would like nothing better than to see it crash.

[elhombrelibre]

That’s something he picked up while reading THE ELDERS OF ZION.

[Popman]

Thanks...for the information..

[elhombrelibre]

So you enjoy the freedom of Texas and its opportunities while claiming your love of Putin country, which apparently you see is free “propaganda and BS.” I suppose the Rothchilds are under your bed, too.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Worth reading the full article. This institutionalized corruption began under communism and is characteristic of all large and powerful governments. Americans are beginning to get a good taste of it under Obama.