It sure seems like Bush and co learned their tricks from the former Soviet Union, or so
Matt Taibbi
thinks:
But it's way off. It's wishful thinking. The Reich only lasted 12 years. The Soviets reigned for 75.
They were better at it than the Nazis, and we're better at it than the Russians. Ask anyone who's lived
in a communist country, and he'll tell you: Modern America is deja vu all over again. And if ever there
was a Soviet spectacle, it was Bush's speech last week.
Think about it. Huge weapons on display, in foreground and background. The leader who has never fought
dressed in full military regalia. Crowds of adoring soldiers and "shock worker" types dressed in colorful
costumes, carefully arranged for the cameras. A terrible, excruciatingly dull speech, 20 minutes of
incoherent, redundant patriotism (Bush used the words "free" or "freedom" 19 times in an 1800-word speech)
and chimpanzoid chest-pounding.
On May Day.
That was Red Square every year for about 70 straight years. And now it is a most natural fit in our
society.
The genius of the Soviet system-and now the genius of ours-was that it appealed not to the hatreds
and passions of its people, but to other, more dependable qualities: laziness, banality, drunkenness,
cowardice. It gave you a piece of sausage and a bottle of vodka and asked only that you take a few minutes
to cheer some pictures of tanks rolling into Prague. Its leaders (with the exception of Stalin) were a
succession of Bush- like plodders who were dumber than your chimney-sweep uncle and could barely speak
their own language. For vacations it sent you to Bulgaria or Sevastopol because anywhere that was really
abroad was "not safe." And when you were in Bulgaria, you were thrilled to find that just across the street
from your hotel, they had the same "Cafeteria #6" that you had back in Magadan or Vologda or whatever
dank hole you came from.
It's no wonder that McDonald's is such a hit in modern Russia.
It does seem to fit better than the analogies with Nazi-Germany.
This is just a place for me to jot down some random thoughts and reactions to the news so I don't have to yell at the television or radio, or mutter to myself whilst reading the news.
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