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What Next For The Gangster Nation?
No, not Russia: the USA
The USA and Russia have always been far more similar than dissimilar. This may seem like an insane statement at first blush. After all, wasn’t the USA in the 1970s the most wealthy nation on Earth while the Soviet Union was crumbling into total economic disarray? Didn’t US citizens get to drive around in monstrous gas-guzzlers while Russian citizens had to wait for years before taking delivery of some rusty non-functional pile of junk? Weren’t US citizens gorging their way to obesity while Russians were scrabbling for scraps and taking home pails of whatever was left in the factory canteen at the end of the day?
All true. And yet, when we dig deeper, the similarities begin to emerge and they explain why today the USA far more closely resembles Putin’s dysfunctional kleptocracy than it resembles most European nations.
Both the USA and Russia have always been deeply superstitious/religious places in which a majority of the population is in thrall to some version of the mashup mythology known as Christianity. Both the USA and Russia have long promulgated myths of their “greatness” while simultaneously being cut off from the realities of the outside world. The USA is isolated between two vast oceans and essentially ignores its southern and northern neighbors while Russia has always been uncertain…
