Re: A Crushing Victory

In article
<fb2e65f7-80e9-4a53-bca8-9b6dd496888e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Pïteris Cedri¿? (Peteris Cedrins)" <cedrins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 29 Nov., 19:26, Eugene Holman <hol...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article

<deletions>

Training wheels are used to learn to ride a bike.

In the concrete sense. Young adolescent girls get training bras to help
them deal with the...umh...weightier problems they can hope to have
later. People learning to swim sometimes use water wings as a hedge
against their incompetence or fear of the water.

Like Vello said --
learn to swim -- jump into the water.

Russia tried that immediately after the fall of communism. Unfortunately
for it, viewed in retrospect, it accepted too much assistance,
benevolent and malevolent, too soon, from too many lifeguards rather
than figure out what to do in the water on its own. It didn't drown, but
was royally fleeced. Now they are trying their own way, a gradualist way
that is producing concrete results.

You're despicable in your belief
that anti-democratic actions, not to mention strivings, are part of a
process that "evolves" --

That's not what I am saying. I am saying that a healthy democracy cannot
evolve if people spend most of their time worrying about how to survive
the day. Lenin once spoke about going one step backwards in order to go
two steps forward. Russia's model is, in many respects, Pinochet's
Chile, a loyal American ally and creation. Russia has not, as far as we
know, done anything approaching the foulness of the Pinochet regime's
crimes, and I'll be among the first to cry "Foul! Paska-Venäjä!" if it
does.

it's quite obvious that Putin could win this
election without dirty tricks and without turning the clock back. But
that's not really the aim, is it?

Why do you blame Putin? The fact of the matter is that close to 80 per
cent of the population support him and, still novices with the real
democratic process, they regard people who would like to replace him as
disloyal or just plain crazy. Due to the free-for-all chaos of the
Yeltsin years, middle-aged and elderly Russians in particular find it
difficult to grasp that anyone would even think seriously of challenging
a leader and government that, for the first time in Russian history,
seems to be getting most things right. Putin has stated many times that
he will not violate the Russian constitution and run again, but as an
astute politician he has said that this does not mean that he is going
to disappear from the political scene once his term is over. This is his
right and there is nothing untoward about it, particularly considering
some of the folks warming up in the bullpen.


Given that fascism
and a return to communism are the two most likely alternatives to what
we have now, I think that Putin deserves constructive feedback, not
opprobrium.


I think I'll have to agree with Hui and worse in the end -- somebody
_has_ to be paying you for this, Holman. You can't possibly be such a
fucking idiot otherwise.

It's interesting how you address my concerns about Russia from such a
different standpoint than you address Henry's. In your recent posting to
Henry, who knows next to nothing about Russia and cares even less, you
wrote of Russia's strength and its unwillingness to sell itself out to
the West. My message is that when learning to swim by jumping into the
water, Russia was plundered by some of its own robber-barons and was in
danger of becoming a colonial extension of the West or, even worse, of a
coup, competing coup attempts, or a civil war. Now it is looking for its
own solutions, pragmatically zigzagging its way towards democracy and,
to maintain the image, depending on the aquatic equivalent of training
wheels, water wings, until it gets its act together. You might see it as
cheating, and, strictly speaking, it is, but if used no more than
necessary and inflated with just enough air to keep afloat if it makes a
blunder, Russia will eventually learn to swim without them. At least
that's what you, I, and others living in the immediate neighborhood
would like to see.

Nobody pays me for this. I was in Russia four weeks ago and profoundly
moved by the changes that I noticed. This is a kind of therapy.

Regards,
Eugene Holman
.