Good boy, zero for conduct...
Our animus against Russia as the other, the alien, the stranger became a self-defeating cultural filter. Is the Russia we see today, to an appreciable extent, not the product of our prejudicial wish fulfillment and our bullying over these post-1991 decades?
Truth is, we Americans treated Russia (nee Soviet Union) like a defeated power in 1991 — as if it had been some kind of junior Third Reich righteously vanquished. It was never seen as the ally we had known so long, finally come to its senses and having seen the light.

If Germany and Italy, after deep defeat, could be allowed to rediscover themselves and make their identities whole again, why not Russia? We have never let Russia — always banished to in-between realms of identity — find its own place of honor in our own halls.
If Russia seeks acknowledgment, why should we always, reflexively, deny them? Is Russia not, after all, a great civilization and a great nation? Can we not embrace them as such? It seems not.

@темы: link, Russia, society, US, WW III