chuck,
Last winter I stopped at London on the way to Moscow. I was amazed at the anti-US sentiments everywhere in London. So when I was in Russia and Russians would start complaining how unfairly they are portrayed abroad, I would just laugh and say, “You have no idea how unfairly America is portrayed in the world! Get used to it, in the free world everybody trashes everybody all the time.” Generally, Russians were surprised by this. Their thinking is still parochial, based on Russian proverb that friends “Don’t take trash out of the House”, meaning don’t denounce each other before strangers.
That was just another example how Russians are not quite ready for Democracy yet. They simply can’t withstand the pitch of political passions we are used to. The slightest hint of political in-fighting sends them over the edge. May be that’s why they join ranks around Putin. Russians still can’t fathom the level of political hatred and slander that Presidents Clinton and Bush had to go through, for example. They have a lot to learn.
