должен любить россиянами

Gotta love the Russians. -or- Democracy is hard. Alphago, take me away!

Google can't translate the intent of my meaning. Perhaps that's just as well. My own college Russian is so rusty, you could soak it in a vat of WD-40 for a year, and it wouldn't get unstuck. Which is to say, is very very rusty!

I really do mean: shaking my head in rueful admiration, gotta love the Russians. But the translation is more like "It is necessary (for you) to love the Russians". Not quite the same thing.

So, there is room for improvement in the automation of human tasks. Give it time. So, what about the current state of democracy in the good 'ol US of A? I ask this because I voted yesterday, and quizzed a few people as to whether they did as week, and the answer I got was mainly no. It's too hard. Democracy is just too hard. These kids really do need an Alphago voting app. Something to think for them, because thinking is becoming too hard for people. But that's almost always been the case.

That's why the Founding Fathers set up the elitist system that we have. Don't kid yourself. We aren't set up for equal opportunity anything. For all that 'We The People' horseshit, our system of government is set up to keep the average shit-covered peasant as far away as possible from the knobs, switches, and levers of actual power. The Founding Fathers just didn't trust your average sturdy yeoman... except to fight at their command. And we, like the stupid buttholes that we are, do exactly that.

The Russians share that with us. They may be surly and taciturn, morose, and deeply superstitious, but they are profoundly brave and stoic in a way that makes your average American look like the vicious, whiny little brats that our displayed national character says we are. They will shrug their shoulders, and do what they are told.

Not that their system of government is any better. Let's face it, until Velicky Peter came along, their model was the Ottoman Empire. Russia was, and is, an asiatic despotism. Until everyone had to adopt the ways of the French (and now, Americans. You wouldn't believe how many English words have crept into everyday speech there, like 'ta-oon ha-oozes'), they really preferred the opulent decadence of the satrapy.

Democracy, in case you weren't around in the '90s, meant hunger, crime, and despair to your average Russian. From 1991 to 1995, the GDP of the former Soviet Union dropped 39%. I don't think anyone here can understand that. That's far worse than anything during the Great Depression. Under the increasingly incoherent and incompetent rule of Yeltsin, things really did suck. Oh, sure, you had vile criminals that were former Soviet officials. But the West came in and just raped the shit out of the whole country. And Slick Willy stood there and yucked and dug elbows into the pudgy side of Yeltsin while this all happened.

Can you blame them for liking Putin? He helped set up the stable criminal syndicate that kept the raping and extortion down to a tolerable minimum, and then plus, prosperity started to happen. It's true that corruption is rampant, but that's been business as usual since the 1920s. But we really really did number on them, and your average American is completely and hopelessly clueless about that.

Can you blame them for hating us just a little bit?