Well at least Russia supports real marriage unlike America. Might explain why so many of our politicians hate them so much
Loved them when they were commies, loved them when Obama was transmitting bows to Vlad, now they hate them.
Russia is more a competitor than a real threat.
On the world stage, every country is either a producer or consumer of energy, and ***everyone*** falls into the sphere of influence of either them, or us. A few big players like China hedge their bets and try to be on both sides as a consumer, so no one can entirely turn the spigot off if relations sour.
That said, in this competitive struggle, we have the upper hand and we are both always trying to strip major sources away from the other, i.e. our involvement in Syria. That wasn’t about human rights, democracy, any of that horse shit... Some of the Muslims we were backing were cutting off heads. Syria has had official relations with Russia since the 70s and is in their sphere, a producer. It was our attempt to peel them away from Russia.
The Russians are more “consistent” and predictable than we are! Because they do NOT have the massive turn over politically, because they are not as flip-flopping based on whatever is in the news today, they tend to have their agenda and stick with it, whereas we tend to be for the Vietnam war and then against it, for China trade and now against it, for Iraq war and then against it, for a Somalia intervention and then against it, for a Lebanon intervention and then against it (see a trend here?)...
The Russians do not want a large conflict with us (they have something to live for). Sure, they have their own interests are are not our friends, but they are not the existential threat they are made out as.
It’s easy for the Russians to be the bad guys. Cold War perceptions persist and are easy ruts to fall into. They are not part of the Western banking and media network and outsiders that have competing interests financially as well with BRICS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS
They do not go along with every Western media and politically generated bullshit story like Global Warming, the homo agenda, or now the Covid-19 idiocy (the way we are)... You have to realize, they are a world to their own and Western media simply doesn’t have a control over them like it does in say Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand... Real world examples: Solche Winter Olympics, whaling... When Western media made killing the whales a big story and even Star Trek had a save the whales movie, the Russians were shooting harpoons at them. They simply don’t chase Western pop culture themes and this makes them into bad guys also. Just think about something silly like wearing a mask in America today. If you don’t do it, you are unpatriotic, unprofessional, irresponsible, unethical... Whatever the fad of the day is in America, you are a bad person if you don’t jump on the bandwagon. They are also made out as scapegoats at times, i.e. why they are now the bad guys again: US elections 2016 and them being the classic scapegoat for the Democratic party/HRC’s failure.
Will they screw us? In a second. Are they our buddies and can we trust them? No way. But do they want a real conflict with us? No. Are there areas where we can work together and help one another? Absolutely yes. Are they unpredictable? No.
However, the Chinese who we helped industrialize, technologically develop, are that threat. But there we try very hard to see, hear and speak no evil. The likelihood of tens of thousands of American children dying in a conflict with China in the future is by an order of magnitude higher than with Russia.
IMHO-