Power stupefies

Watching events unfold in the Ukraine over the past few days I've been working over in my head a single question: Was there a specific moment in the last few years when former President Viktor Yanukovich said to himself, "Screw it, I'm going to go ahead and put in the pirate ship-themed dining room and start a private zoo. There's no way that could possibly come back to haunt me."

It is a moldy old saying that power corrupts, when it seems more precisely that power stupefies. Something about being a ruling oligarch makes you think there's no way you could ever be knocked off, and looking from afar, it is hard to believe anyone could be that deluded. It is probably a bit like winning lottery — everyone is convinced they aren't the guy who is going to go bankrupt in a few years after they win, but it keeps happening over and over again.

The Ukraine is a great case study in the ways things just don't change, and how patterns keep repeating in new and wonderful ways. So I watch thing with a very cynical eye, and chortle when I hear commentators in our stunningly earnest and ignorant American media declare, "Well Joe, I tell ya all this started in the 1930s with Stalin." (Only Americans are young enough at heart to say things like that).

I'm incredibly pessimistic about things because I've been following things there closely, and I remember the Orange Revolution. That last outpouring of popular unrest in the Ukraine was enough to scare Russia to its core, and convince Americans that the Ukraine was all set for the future and didn't need anymore attention. But as events unfolded, the new power structure revealed itself very quickly to be just as venal and greedy as the last one. To say, "they blew it" is an understatement. So the stunning events of last weekend were a real downer. I wish it were possible for the public persona of Yulia Tymoshenko to immediate skip from her heroic release from prison and go straight to the cheesy "Evita" theater spectacle featuring her hairdo. Too bad she's going to insist on proving how corrupt she is all over again — and perhaps someday the masses can take selfies in her gold-plated hot tub or with her vintage car collection.

With leaders like these there's not a lot to hope for. Yanukovich was a singular case, such a clown that even Russian is embarrassed to know him (I sincerely hope we someday find out that his tragicomic flight from the mobs included him dressing up as a nun and slipping out a hotel kitchen). But the opposition is reduced to Tymoshenko's flunkies, some nationalist groups that remind you just how scary the far right is in central and eastern Europe, and a celebrity boxer. If only it were just as easy as deciding between owing your soul to Russian oligarch or the German bankers.

The powerful act stupid because they don't believe things will change. At that level, you have to create such world views or you don't function. And I think the rest of us feel it too. All through last week, when the streets were on fire and the bodies were stacking up in the hotel lobbies, it felt like that feeling amped up to 11. How could this possibly end? how could anything change?

And then on the weekend, it did. Everything we will hear in the coming months will suggest that it was the only outcome possible, but of course it wasn't, and it certainly never felt that way as it happened. Scenes feel like they'll go on forever until they don't. Growing up I didn't believe in the possibility of a generation defining event like Pearl Harbor — I thought that right up to Sept. 10, 2011. It always comes as a surprise. Vladimir Putin and Jamie Dimon take note.

When there are no good options

Secretary of State John Kerry's testimony before Congress this week arguing for military action in Syria is incoherent nonsense because it couldn't be any other way. Everyone who honestly tries to think about this unspooling catastrophe ends up bound in loops and knots. It's just more dramatic for Kerry, who has to explain in a steady voice that we aren't going to war, just authorizing a "response," and we aren't clear what that might look like, but it certainly won't entail "boots on the ground." Round and round, explained with professional earnestness. From the man who once, a generation ago, asked Congress how you could ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake. I feel bad for him.

This is what happens when a nation has to honestly discuss matters of life and death and the course of nations. This is an important moment, but it is not a repeat of the run up to the war in Iraq. While it is certain that the Bush administration's foolishness hangs heavy over everything that we do, it is only in the sense that we wasted every scrap of goodwill we once had with the wider world, which makes everything harder. But Obama is not Bush. There is no malice, no cynical efforts to twist matters for hidden ends.

No, this is nothing like 2003. We are having an actual debate. Those of us who were against that war remember how much worse it was, the feeling of hopelessness, isolation, and helplessness in the face of mass delusion. Today, half my twitter feed is made up of anti-war sentiments. We are in a different world. And it is insulting to hear pundits claim it is the same. Recovering warmongers like Andrew Sullivan talk about this like AA members badmouthing about demon alcohol.

We should be grateful we are going through this process. I applaud President Obama for throwing the matter to Congress, which is not only politically savvy in spreading the blame, but it forces that cracker factory of a legislature to grow up and behave. And not coincidentally, it is the right thing to do according to our Constitution, which has been ritually ignored in these matters since 1964. (Among the most unpleasant aspects of this is how often I have to agree with Sen. Rand Paul).

There is nothing black or white here, and those that think it is, whether Sen. John McCain and Medea Benjamin, are profoundly misguided. It comes down to this: whether you are for war or against, whether it happens or not, you should feel uncertain and shitty about it. Because this is a perfectly uncertain and shit moment.

After thinking about this months, I've decided I'm opposed to action because I don't think it will help anything, and I we have neither the ability nor the will to bring order to this hornet's nest. More killing courtesy of our expensive cruise missiles won't help.

But that alone doesn't feel right. Perhaps the Congress can do is approve conditional military action if we can prove there is another chemical attack. Because there are people in Damascus now who live in terror of another gas attack, and perhaps if the regime has that kind of threat hanging over it, it might make them pause. At least that would be a moral thread to grab at.

Is all the world Istanbul now?

Already ready for anything. Taksim Square, August 2012

There are few places that grew on me as fast as Istanbul, where I spent a few days last August when I had to leave the EU to clear my visa. It is an overwhelming place — massive, crowded, sprawling over water and hills, and heavy with layer upon layer of history. But I didn't anticipate how it is one of the most authentically friendly places I've ever been. I remember with bemusement the almost constant conversations I had with men trying to sell rugs to me, the unhurried way the shopkeepers in the Bazaar would chat away while trying to make a sale, the way the waiters at restaurants fussed over me (even though it was Ramadan and a very busy time for them), the way Olga's friend from grad school took a day off work to show me around.

So I was horrified that it came to this. The people of Turkey do not deserve the kind of government that shoots tear gas and water cannons at them for a perfectly reasonable protest against a perfectly stupid and tacky transfer of a public asset into a playground for the wealthy. As everyone makes clear, the recent protests are not just about Gezi Park, but about an arbitrary and authoritarian government that takes advantage of the shortcomings of the democratic process. It is an example of something that has been happening all over the world. And the world is not big enough that you can afford to believe this isn't about us.

Erdogan is just another case of the only "Third Way" that really exists in politics today: the election of servants of self-perpetuating oligarchs who run the businesses, an international ruling elite that successfully manipulates the rickety power of voting with softcore nationalism and full-blown, religious mind-fog.

I think the template for this comes from Russia, obviously, where Vladimir Putin has successfully coopted the once unruly post-Soviet business elites to get on board, powered by the strange, desperate voting power of superstitious old crones in dying villages. Another obvious emulator of this strategy was the Fidesz party in Hungary, who took advantage of their first supermajority in Parliament to write one of the dumber constitutions of any self-proclaimed democracy.

Of course, the model is beginning to fall apart. Hungary's economy is abject mess, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban's schizophrenic switching between constituencies makes one question his mental health. In Russia, the state if relying more and more on the tried and true means of coercion, like insane new laws that proscribe jail terms for hurting the feelings of the religious faithful. And in time-honored Stalinist tradition, it not only throws the book at opponents like punk bands and bloggers, but has begun purging alternate centers of power within itself. So the idea that peaceful protests in Istanbul would end in baton-wielding policemen and water cannons is part of a general human story.

Here in America, we briefly flirted with the idea of looking at the problem with the Occupy movement, which ran out of steam too fast. Thanks to our institutional two-party system, we cling to an illusion of difference when in fact, both parties work for the same wealthy elites — only Democrats are slightly more concerned about how unsightly it would be to have old people dying in the streets. The process was well on its way even before 2001, when we terrorized ourselves into giving everything away. Obama hasn't really changed anything but the details — we still have secret prisons, we murder people by executive fiat more than we did before, and of course, the massive spying apparatus we've allowed to be put in place. And his fundamental faith in compromise is looking more and more like a part of some Bilderburg scheme to maintain the status quo at all costs. Obama represents the absolute poverty of "hope" as a political end or means. And if you think Cory Booker is the answer, keep hoping.

That's the world we live in, and the most depressing part is how few options there are. The conflict in Syria is fascinating because it is a struggle between the most dynamic and active alternatives to the "Third Way." Choosing between Authoritarianism and Jihad is hardly how anyone hoped the 21st century would play out.

I think about the people of Istanbul in Gezi Park, who are aware of what their government is about, who are part of the modern global economy and know its tools and ideals, and who are still faced with a daunting opponent. It would be a wonderful world, if we could choose being something other than the bug or the windshield.

Margaret on the bier

I am enough of an anglophile that I've been following the public conversation in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death very closely. That is, I've been following the British conversation because the American one has been useless and shallow (credit to Alex Pareene, at Salon, for spelling it out real simple-like for the folks over here).

My first instinct was to keep quiet about it, mostly out of respect that if people had feelings that would inspire "Margaret on the Guillotine," then I wasn't fully engaged to have a right to speak up.

But when has that ever stopped anyone on the Internet, for heaven's sake.

One of the most interesting things I've read is this essay by comedian Russell Brand in this morning's Guardian. His disagreement with her is very kind and human, and allows him to see what really is the horror of her legacy:

All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.

A huge part of the revulsion against her is not so much what she did. Reading through the lefty papers it is clear that all but the most dogmatic Labourites have come around that much of what she did would have had to be done anyway (though, the success of economies like Germany and France that had no comparable Thatcher seems an important note).

What drove opponents nuts — and warmed the hearts of supporters — was the style, how mercilessly grim and angry her approach was. It wasn't enough to do these things, it was to create generations of mutual hate, creating a perfectly atomized little society — of which, she famously said, there was no such thing.

Here is where the comparisons to the American situation, and her obvious homologue, Ronald Reagan. Unlike Thatcher, who was a legitimate bully, I still against my best instincts have a hunch that Reagan was a legitimately decent human. This was the flashing genius of American conservatism, whose greatest successes in its modern form have been ruthlessly pragmatic criminals, like Nixon, or malleable half-wits, like Reagan and Bush Jr. Everything else is all rape philosophers and entitled phonies. For all the toxicity of our political system, a majority of us can't seem to bring ourselves — even in our worst moments — to elect unrepentant bullies to our highest office.

I want to think that this would be a good thing, except that the lesson has been absorbed a bit too well by my side. Thus, our alleged Democratic president has proposed an insane budget replete with "entitlement" cuts. This is an absolute failure of leadership, an f-you to the debt you owe the democratic process, as manifest in the very recent election won by a large margin.

The Watergate Mystique

My generation has been left a whole herd of sacred cows to sort through by the baby boomers, and none smells quite like Watergate. It is, we are ritually reminded, a singularity — the very worst of Presidential mischief, and the very best of American journalism. As it celebrates its 40th anniversary this month has enough time passed to think about it clearly?

Like any very durable collective delusion, it serves the purposes of the powerful. It reshaped our political landscape in a way that the far-right, which was pounding on the doors of the GOP already in the Nixon years, could effectively bury the center-right. For the left, it did the opposite job: handing the center and the right of the party a convenient Republican bogeyman to remind the faithful what happens if the party strays too left. But perhaps the worst of the hangover is with the media. Watergate, and in particular the roles of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, is a very comforting narrative American journalists have told themselves at times of great stress and strain.

I'll admit that my thoughts on the subject are perhaps a bit shaggy — I write this blog for fun in my spare time, don't forget. But I remember the way that when I was in high school the clock of history stopped right at Watergate. I was aware even then the real electric thrill that comes with writing history, which is something you can never forget.

So here are a few ideas, that I hope are food for thought.

WOODSTEIN

Unfortunately for Woodward and Bernstein, their party was spoiled last spring when Jeff Himmelman's account of some lingering doubts about the story appeared in New York magazine. The specific nuances of the controversy are the stuff of J-school panel discussions. Basically, it seems that they actually did get information from a grand juror, which they had previously lied about (because, reasonably, they'd have gone to jail). It's just enough to poke some ugly shadows on the awesome 70s detective story, and the event that sparked a revival of the already moribund newspaper industry.

The legend of Woodward and Bernstein, like any self-flattering fantasy, says a lot about American journalism. In particular, its incredible self-righteousness and obsession with the details of the digging over the big picture. All this is for another post. But what about the results, did they "bring down a president"? Probably not: the wheels of history were grinding along fine on their own.

Here's the blunt truth about how things were going, according to Max Holland:

"Federal prosecutors and agents never truly learned anything germane from the Washington Post’s stories—although they were certainly mortified to see the fruits of their investigation appear in print. The FBI’s documents on Watergate, released as early as 1992, bear this out. The government was always ahead of the press in its investigation of Watergate; it just wasn’t publishing its findings."

And for the record, they were helped greatly by "Deep Throat," just another career bureaucrat with an ax to grind. Don't look too closely at how the sausage is made.

John Cook at Gawker provides a more thorough brief about their work. "It represents the Platonic ideal of what journalism-with-a-capital-J ought to be, at least according to its high priesthood — sober, careful young men doggedly following the story wherever it leads and holding power to account, without fear or favor," Cook writes. "It was also a sloppy, ethically dubious project the details of which would mortify any of the smug high priests of journalism that flourished in its wake. The actual Watergate investigation could never have survived the legacy it helped create."

But isn't it convenient there are so many photographs of them while they worked?

NIXON IN CONTEXT

Now let's take a look at Richard M. Nixon, a man who became a cartoon villain in the eyes of baby boomers. This month, Woodward and Bernstein teamed up again (for the first time in decades! what an event!) to rehash what he meant. They argue that saying "the coverup was worse than the crime" — a bit of lazy thinking that's become common — disregards what a bastard he was. That makes them look, again, like crusading superheroes.

Watergate ensures that we are unable to see Nixon clearly, which is a shame. His domestic policy was ruthlessly pragmatic, which meant a certain degree of pandering to the South, but also a lot of things worth cheering about. OSHA and the EPA were created under his watch.

On foreign policy, he and that miserable, fatuous toad Kissinger came up with some real Hague-worthy evils. No doubt about that. He was desperate to finish on his terms a war which, let it never be forgotten, was started by his Democratic predecessors. But on other fronts, the easing of the Cold War is going to remembered centuries from now. Much is made of his China moment, but less acclaimed is the spirit of detente with the Soviet Union, which brought us a full decade of peace and enabled the wretched old system to collapse under its own inefficiency and nastiness. Look at this campaign ad from 1972 — a Republican, a man who made his name hounding FDR loyalists for being Reds, made that! It's almost, please excuse me, human.

Which brings us to the other fact: Nixon was dark and bitter and twisted, and anyone who has read a novel or glanced through Shakespeare can understand that there was something very complicated and very familiar about him.

THE SCARECROW

The great tragedy of Watergate was the opportunity it presented to seal for another generation the victories of moderate liberalism of Roosevelt and Johnson.

No matter what anyone tells you, George McGovern is the man the Founding Fathers dreamed about. Modest, dedicated to public service, intelligent. His like simply don't exist in American politics today. But in the wretched aftermath of the loss, Democrats managed to ask all the wrong questions. They were so worked up with the evil of the other guys, that didn't bother to think about themselves. In 1976, a free pass if ever there was one, they were still freaked out about appearing too far to the left.

That left the door open for an unctuous, self-righteous con man who couldn't stop talking about how much he loved Jesus and how bloody fucking honest he was and how don't you dare call him a "liberal" (I've gone at length into the truth about the Carter "legacy" here).

Everything Nixon and his gang of clowns couldn't accomplish with their college pranks, Jimmy Carter did for them.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In terms of scandals, Watergate is a lark compared to Iran-Contra, which we will never conclusively get to the bottom of. In terms of politics, Nixon was was responsible for nothing as bad as the pollution that has streamed into our civic life since 1994. The Plumbers were ridiculous, evil, and shitty (Colson, in his afterlife, proved he was a bigger fuck than we could have imagined, Magruder deserves a heavy dose of honest respect and forgiveness), but they were mere pranksters compared to what Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzalez could accomplish.

And in terms of the real structural damage Nixon accomplished to the United States and the constitution, again, nothing compared to what George W. Bush pulled off. A wholesale redistribution of the nation's wealth to the rich, wars launched on false pretences, half-wits installed all over the federal branch that will take a generation to shit out. And with the Roberts Court, its a gift that could keep on giving for decades more.

There is a lot to talk about on the occasion of this anniversary. But at some point, we have to start asking the right questions about this third-rate burglary.

The endless cycle of 're-education' in Eastern Europe

President Obama managed to step into a classic Eastern European controversy this week. It was perfectly clear that when he said that Jan Karski, a hero of the resistance to Nazi Germany, did time in a "Polish death camp," he made a mistake. Somewhere, a speechwriter misplaced an adjective — such things happen — and the president quickly owned up to it. All this is clear to any honest person, but alas, there are very few honest people in politics, especially when you're talking about the past, and especially here in Eastern Europe.

The nature of the hysterics in Poland is very revealing. Here's Prime Minister Donald Tusk's freakout: "we always react in the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions lead to such a distortion of history, so painful for us here in Poland, in a country which suffered like no other in Europe during World War II.” Outrage, pain, self-pity... this is all practically boilerplate. But even I'm taken aback by it — just what "bad intentions" does Tusk imagine the President harbors toward Poland? what kind of insult was he slinging by awarding America's highest possible civilian honor to a Polish war hero?

It took a few days to blow over, and it seems everyone's delicate sensibilities are soothed. “The events of the past few days and the U.S. president’s reply may, in my opinion, mark a very important moment in the struggle for historical truth,” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said. Swell, but the thing is, there was never a question about "historical truth." It was a mistake.

If all this gassing is about any "historical truth," it has to be the craven political culture of early 21st century Europe, and the thin-skinned malice so many here still cling to. No one doubts what a terrible, bloody, and cruel century just passed, but the obsessive need to control a simple, self-affirming story is sad. Anything that complicates a black and white parable of pure-hearted Polish (or Hungarian, Latvian, Ukrainian, etc.) suffering at the hands of Nazi or Soviet aggression cannot be tolerated (a critical note: you can also talk about Russian aggression but never, never German aggression). The details vary from country to country — Hungary's unwillingness to acknowledge its complicity in Nazi warmongering, Poland's defensive insistence that it was always perfectly blameless, Ukraine's deeply unpleasant effort to convince the world that famines caused by Stalin's collectivization were worse than the Holocaust.

Understanding history requires you hold multiple ideas in your head at once. And if you refuse to do that, you're not talking about "historical truth" at all, just plain political gamesmanship.

Among the loudest outraged defenders of Polish honor was Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, husband of neocon hack Anne Applebaum, and former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He had the decency to — eventually — accept Obama's apology in a tweet: "Thank you, President Obama. Truth, honor and the legacy of Karski satisfied. Please feel free to send us your staffers for re-education."

First, I'm touched he admits that Obama — that socialist — is really our president and didn't ask to see a birth certificate. Second, he knows where he can stuff his Polish "re-education" camps.

Is it worse to bury the past and try to forget it, or to keep selectively stirring it up for cheap tactical purposes? Who knows, but it sure is depressing that the idea of making peace with the past in an honest and well-intentioned way never seems to be an option.

What changed after Bolotnaya?

I spent the whole winter watching in surprise and amazement at what was happening in Moscow. Back in June when it seemed we would spend the year there, I wasn't looking forward to it. A year in a grim, expensive, depressed city where everything stays the same forever (except when they get worse). If the outcome of several exciting months is precisely what any safe bet would have been a year ago — Putin taking the oath for another term in the Kremlin — the very process, I thought, must have changed something.

So when we went to Moscow last week for family matters, I had my eyes and ears open. And on Sunday, the day before Putin's inauguration, I had the chance to see to see the state of civil society for myself.

The gathering was organized at Bolotnaya Square, scene of the first great moment back in December which already feels like ancient history. Despite being a sprawling megacity, Moscow's heavy-handed top-down authority keeps the chaos to a minimum, and we could tell something was up once we got to the Metro and announced several stops in the center were entirely shut down. The closest we could get was Novokuznetskaya, and since we'd already missed the march portion of the event, which was on a parallel street, we got out there and walked along the river.

That gave us a chance to the police staging area just east of the square. Lined up along the bridge just east of the square was some sort of staging area. The word "phalanx" is one I'd never really thought about, but there it was. Row after row, several deep, of fully-equipped riot police, in helmets and face shields, body armor and batons, just standing, waiting to be pointed at something. Coming upon them gave me a sense of the shock and awe of an 18th century battlefield, of coming over a hill and seeing the enemy all ready, with their shit together, ready to jump on you. It almost feels like that alone is half the battle. In this case, it was far more menacing because there was not display function in any of this. This was the backstage area, not even a show of force. 

We walked along the river to the entrance. Bolotnaya Square is a peculiar little stretch of asphalt on the south side of the long, narrow island that sits in the middle of the Moscow River. Geographically, it is incredibly close to the Kremlin, but practically, it is another world. It is accessible only by a handful of bridges. We crossed one, going through the first police checkpoint, which led to the western end of the square. From there we were channeled into it, toward where they had set up a stage and sound system, which was blaring classic Russkie Rock hits from Kino, and Nautilius Pompilius. On our right was the river, on our left, behind a row of port-a-johns and temporary metal fences, were a full line of police men.

We spent awhile as people streamed in, and watched the group. It was very diverse. There were certainly a lot of young people, the kind I would imagine attending an anti-establishment protest in the West. But there were older people, who looked like they'd been in the spirit of protesting their whole lives. A few had clearly anarchist signs, others outright Soviet nostalgia. But most were perfectly normal-looking middle class people, a few brought their kids.

As everyone filed in, I made note of what I thought must be a major achievement in the creation of Russian civil society: the whole thing was pretty boring. There wasn't much happening. It was a strange feeling: overall, it felt as if the authorities had made peace with the idea of larger-scale protest. The march was permitted, and more or less kept to the shape of several earlier peaceful ones which had gone off without a hitch under much more uncertain circumstances (i.e., it wasn't perfectly clear the regime had won yet). There were rumors that troublemakers were interested in starting some sort of "Occupy" camp near the Kremlin at Manezh Square, and we saw one hippie-looking lad on the subway carrying an LL Bean outlet's worth of camping gear, but we figured just a few fools would get themselves arrested. It seemed like everything was going to be boring, and the greatest challenge was going to be to figure out how to sustain the momentum through the long, long years stretched out ahead.

Everything shifted quite abruptly. Everyone who had gone ahead of us seemed to at once stop, turn around, and start walking back. Word spread through the crowd that the organizers of the event — Nemtsov, Navalny, Udaltsov, I believe —had been turned away (or had refused to go through). There appeared to be a sudden, intense stand-off behind us. Everyone had turned around. Someone from the perfectly superfluous stage announced that the meeting had been cancelled. It was hard to figure out what was going on, and so we began to make our way home.

We didn't hear about the violence until much later when we arrived home. Everyone was looking in the direction of what was happening, but we couldn't make anything out. The worst we saw was an NTV television van getting a working over. It was already piled with rubbish, and a crowd was pelting it with trash as we walked by. A line of indifferent police officers were standing a few feet away. I saw a perfectly respectable, middle-aged woman, who looked like she could have been a middle school art teacher, appear at my shoulder and hurl a glass bottle at the van, with an indescribably angry face. It was perhaps the only moment of real nervousness I felt, like a mob was about to turn very ugly. Meanwhile, back at the Square, things had already turned ugly, when a few provocateurs and an army of hyped up police goons made the news that would be seen around the world.

We made our way back toward Ordynka. It was our last night in Moscow, and my hankering for ethnic food led me to suggest we stop for dinner at Shesh-Besh, a decent Azeri chain restaurant, for some shashlik. The restaurant crowd was familiar from any Moscow restaurant — lots of well-dressed people, families with kids, everyone with smartphones, a scene almost Western. But I noticed that almost every single person there had a white ribbon on them.

Coming into this week, this is what I imagined the real value of these protests had been. The worst part about semi-authoritarian regimes is how alienating and atomizing they are. For years you walked around the city, and could never tell what the faces you saw on the street really thought about the political situation. If you hated Putin, aside from your family and close friends, you felt very alone. That all began to change with social media, and with the first stirrings of protest — when those intimate, desperate conversations around the kitchen table (an almost permanent feature of Russian life) were suddenly shared with perfect strangers in public.

Putin's actual inauguration was just as depressing as could be imagined. We watched it having a long breakfast, just before we set about packing for our trip home. The whole thing struck me as some kind of very dumb Disney princess movie, with an OJ car chase in the middle. People who try to deconstruct the details of it — the single camera, the general atmosphere of a very lame, scripted, "reality t.v." show — are forgetting something. Medvedev's inauguration four years ago was precisely the same, the same fetishized pomp and symbolism for no real point.

All this, with the violence, made it even more depressing than I was prepared for. I was ready to admit that while the battles were lost, the struggle wasn't over. That the gains painfully made would not be given up. That the focus would become smaller, on municipal and regional councils, on the hard work of living for a cause and building something beyond the occasional grand gesture. That thanks to social networks and alternate media there was no way the regime could carry on as before. That the sheer weight of corruption, official bullshit, and the countless, needless aggravations that make up life in Russia had finally tipped over and couldn't be set back. That maybe, for the first time in its long history, Russia would experience the kind of gradual, positive social change that would lead to peace and prosperity.

Then I caught myself; that's just wishful thinking. All Russians really have now is exactly what they had before: not much.

This is why I don't gamble

The great thing about being a pessimist is that if the awful thing actually happens, you can take comfort in at least being right, and if it doesn't, you're so glad who cares what you thought. Proving that Russia is never boring, my predictions were way off.

But... you can never be too cynical when thinking about Russia, so the headlines in the West about Putin taking a beating miss the point. Watching election coverage Sunday, the talking points emerged pretty quickly: the economy is horrible, of course the incumbents would take a beating! and doesn't this prove once and for all that democracy in Russia is transparent?

You don't have to look too hard to realize this is too simple. Look at the roster of opposition parties in the new Duma: all the same chuckleheads who were the "opposition" in the old Duma. I heard a very telling quote from a United Russia leader on Russia Today last night, talking about how there would be no permanent coalition partner, but that they would make "technical" coalitions on a case by case basis. This means they'll pair up with A Just Russia for legislation to quiet human rights scolding, with the Communists to quiet whining pensioners, and with LDPR when they need to serve up some red meat to shut up ultranationalists.

And the system itself remains badly screwed up. National party-list voting in a country the size of Russia is plainly ridiculous. Voters don't choose leaders to represent them -- they choose party hacks who are loyal to their party leaders, who are loyal to themselves. And the fact no one ever talks about the Federation Council, theoretically a part of the legislative branch, says it all. And voters won't get to say anything about again for five years.

Occupy Szabad Sajtó útca?

Sunday felt like the first of those late autumn, early winter days in Central Europe that people love to warn you about. Mid-40s, damp, pure grey -- the kind of days that make the happiest and healthiest people feel dour and fevered. Pulling up the shutters that morning, I thought to myself that Prime Minister Viktor Orban would probably be pleased -- both the left and the right might just choose to stay home.

I headed off to the protest after lunch, after taking a long time to decide whether or not I would go. I felt a little silly, like Norman Mailer in his writing on the 1960s protests, when he spent a silly amount of time thinking about himself and what his place in all these sweeping events was. Would I go as a journalist? not precisely, because there's no money involved. As a participant? that's tricky. I take the idea of national self-determination seriously, and Hungary is not my country.

Yet, 2011 has a certain special feeling, like 1989, 1968, maybe even 1848. Whatever is happening is bigger than any one country. I've spent a lot of time these past few weeks thinking about Occupy Wall Street, and how I'd respond if I were still back home right now. My opinion has changed a few times over that stretch. I began from a definite distance -- I have a permanent skepticism of the way leftist dissent in America presents itself as a laundry list of isolated grievances. Maybe its generational, but I can't think about this sort of checklist of interests without irony. But I've been won over by the idea of it. After all, I have an unreasonable mountain of student loan debt. I devoted myself to a profession that was trashed by unimaginative leaders, investment bankers, and a professional managerial class. So in general, yea, I have some pretty serious grievances. 

So I chose to go as an observer, a blogger, and see what I could see. The walk to the protest was striking, as usual. I crossed the Lanchid, which I've done dozens of times this month, and it never looks the same. On Sunday, it was decorated with flags -- it was National Day, when the country commemorates the beginning of the 1956 Uprising.

Twelve more years....

I went online to check the news Saturday afternoon, and saw a peculiar headline at Izvestia. It was the usual humdrum weekend layout, but the main headline read "Medvedev agrees to head United Russia Duma list." That's funny, I thought, because if he ran for Duma it would be hard to run for... oh.

Talk about burying the lede. Every western news agency got it right: "Putin to return as Russian President." All of a sudden, with unmistakeable clarity, the national political life of this country has been decided for the next 12 years. But much of the Russian media seems to have taken incredible pains to avoid spelling out the obvious, presenting the developments as just another "normal" part of the political process in this "sovereign democracy."

But it is sinking in. The past few months, you hear a lot of talk about "stagnation," reminding many of the Brezhnev era's modest economic comfort, stifling stability, and soft repression. It's understandable. Something about the way people complain about the difficulty of life in Russia has gotten more desperate, I've noticed, and I've heard some surprising people talk about how tired of it all they have become. It's hopeless, so no wonder the media is trying to downplay the reality of what just happened.

It is a rather different feeling than the last time Russia was told of a shift at the top in December 2007. I heard about it in the evening, when I was listening to the "Nachtkonzert" online, and was convinced I'd misheard the German news announcer. Could it be Putin had really picked the gentle, Western-minded legal scholar over the defense industry stooge who was considered his primary rival? There were certainly good reasons then to be queasy about how the transfer of power was conducted, but there was a possibility it could be the light at the end of the tunnel. For those that clung to that belief, this weekend's developments must be particularly hard.

This underscores the limits of the "stagnation" narrative. Under Brezhnev, the USSR was simply old and worn out. On the occasion of his death, in November 1982, Serge Schmemann of the New York Times wrote about the mood on the street:

"In the later years of Mr. Brezhnev's life, his slurred speech and obvious infirmity evinced a combination of pity, embarassment and aggravation among many Soviet people.

During his recent speech in Baku, at which he began reading the wrong text, a woman watcing on television was overheard to say, 'Poor man, why do they make him do all this at his age?' The comment was typically Soviet in the presumption taht even the General Secretary of the Communist Party is somehow manipulated by the faceless 'They.'

Among more sophisticated people, a common feeling in later months was a frustrated sense that any progress, any reform, any assault on the country's economic and social stagnation was impossible under the aged, frail Brezhnev regime.

'I don't care if it does get worse,' one economic planner recently said. 'As long as there's change.'"

There is nothing old and worn out about those in power now, and there aren't words for the feeling of finding yourself once again at the bottom of such a very large hill.

The Carter legacy

I'd love to offer former President Jimmy Carter the kind of quiet respect his office ought to deserve, but his weirdly vindictive and plainly untrue comments as he hawks his new new book shouldn't be left alone. It would have been nice to forget the nightmare of his presidency, and the wasted opportunity his election was for generations of Americans, but if he's seriously going to say in public that it was Ted Kennedy's fault health care reform didn't pass, then I'm going to say what a fraud and waste his entire career was.

They like to say that Carter has been a better ex-president than president. Which frankly, isn't that hard a post to pass. But the man does not get nearly enough blame for obnoxious trends in national politics that he introduced. These are things many of us think may have come from Nixon, or Reagan, but are in fact his unique contribution to American culture.

Politics and the English language, 2010

The President has proposed a half-day, televised health care summit, and in the process of chickening out, House GOP leader John Boehner and Eric Cantor use one of the most Orwellian quotes I've seen in a long-time.

"If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate."

The mixture of Newspeak and lies in this solitary sentence is chilling. "Job-killing"? which think tank dreamt that up? And when precisely did "the American people" reject anything? When the people of Massachusetts voted in a special election?

The enduring politics of noise

Thinking about L'il Liddy and the Teabuggers, and the general nature of political discourse in this country, I was struck by a quote I just came across. Try to place it...

"It was impossible in the tumult and the shouting to hear much that was said from the platform or to deduce the essential ideology of this great crusade. But one thing came out strong and clear. It was the promise, reiterated to deafening applause, 'to get the liberal termites' out of Washington and out of the conduct of American affairs. John F. Kennedy, you have been warned."

That's Alistair Cooke, writing about a rally for Young Americans for Freedom ("which only two years ago was a defiant underground of odd-men-out and is now a national organisation") in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, March 9, 1961.

So this is what it looks like...

It often felt like it would never come, but it looks like North Adams' "Mayor for Life," John Barrett III, has finally met his match after 26 years. During the years that I covered North Adams for the Eagle, and spoke to the Mayor almost daily, I often wondered what the end would look like. I especially thought about this after getting one of those hair-dryer treatments when he didn't like a story I'd written, or was forced to bite my tongue and report some unpleasantness about the Harriman and West Airport, or the Hoosac Water Quality District. I had it on extremely good authority that he was already planning his post-City Hall future, but I figured he would go out on his own terms. After all, he hadn't seen a real fight since the 90s, and the dead-end grumblers and sincere proponents of change never seemed to outnumber his base of seniors and lifelong city residents whose kids could have been in one of his grade school classes way back when he was a school-teacher. One of the great things about local politics is how real and raw it is. There is no polling, no big media machines, no legions of consultants (thought there was a little of everything in this race -- I was astonished to see ads for the candidates during a Celtics game last week). It is face to face and personal, and it is impossible to predict. All you can do is listen to the local wiseguys and feel like you're watching baseball before sabermetrics. Watching this campaign through the year, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Nothing would have surprised me, except, perhaps, the size of Dick Alcombright's margin. I'd have predicted it would have been way closer.

Superpower blues

In a piece for The Boston Globe, I compare the state of civil society here and in Russia.

My senator, Ted Kennedy

What kind of Massachusetts liberal would I be if I let the day pass without a few thoughts. Lots has already been said, and I've been surprised at just how positive and sad the coverage of Edward Kennedy's death has been. No matter how we try to explain it away, public mourning is always about ourselves, not the man or the family or the times. And Ted's death comes just at a moment when there is so much to be worried about. So I'll leave it to others to eulogize the great national tragedies that have cut so close to him, or the many personal ones that he bounded over in the course of a career of dedicated service. All I can think about is how far we've sunk, and for what. I'm thinking of the tea-baggers, and the birthers, and the Town-Hallers. About the legions of white men nursing delusional grievances about how women and minorities are out to get them. Or all those folks who suffer from inadequate educations, and can articulate nothing beyond parroting how we must stop "these Nazi socialists from taking over health care and messing up Medicare." These increasingly loud and obnoxious folks who have allowed themselves to believe it is appropriate and kick-ass to bring assault weapons to public policy forums. There are two things that have struck with me throughout the day. The first is the way the Ted and the entire Kennedy clan were able to cut through this fog, and make these people see their interests clearly, and inspire them to think beyond hate and greed and toward a better future. For Ted, this was a skill he learned from his grandfather, the great Irish ward-heeler and Boston mayor John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. The Democratic Party has completely lost this skill. You don't need to look far to see why. Just check-out the Times OpEd page today, where Maureen Dowd approvingly drops in passing the following repugnant stink-bomb from Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic: "The Internet is like closing time at a blue-collar bar in Boston. Everyone’s drunk and ugly and they’re going to pass out in a few minutes.” Here's the thing: these same wretched proles way down there under Wieseltier and Dowd's noses weren't the vanguard of the Reagan revolution. They were for decades the core of Ted's support. And it is no mean feat that they stuck with him through a lot -- from Chappaquiddick, through busing, through all the drunken embarrassments. Whatever his personal problems may have been, politically he was usually right, and he was able to persuade the people who voted for him that he was -- whether against invading Iraq, supporting a sensible and fair immigration policy, or rejecting the hateful "Defense of Marriage Act." Unlike the wealthy today, Ted was raised with the belief that if you were born in the right place and the right time, that you actually owed your country an awful lot. He served his constituents well, and without condescending to them. It doesn't seem that hard to figure out, so I'm having a very hard time trying to figure out why his death should mark the end of an era. The second thing that's been on my mind is what Ted's life says about the real spirit of bipartisanship. It came through loud and clear listening Sen. Orrin Hatch try to stifle a sob talking about his old friend on the radio today. Here is the big secret about compromise: you have to actually have principles before you can start negotiating them away. You have to believe in more than maximizing your chances to be reelected for another term, and can't try to pass off as real values a pile of triangulated, Mark Penn market-tested centrist bullshit ginned up by the Democratic Leadership Council. There's no shame in being a liberal, especially now.

I'm younger than that now

I was living in Washington eight years ago when Bush was inaugurated for his first term. It was one of the most upsetting and disturbing days I can remember, how down to the very details it was like a cinema director's impression of the forces of evil taking over the world. The freezing drizzle of that grey day, the dispirited protesters who gathered in Dupont Circle and sullenly marched toward some vague point near the parade route. Through the night, the city was full of coaches carrying hillbillies who thought it was very funny to wear cowboy boots with tuxedos from one ball to another. It was like a gang of fat Visigoths and their plastic-haired wives had taken over the capital.


I kept reminding myself that it wouldn't be that bad, that it couldn't be that bad. America is a land of political compromise and balance, after all. But for eight long years, it proved to be worse than anything anyone could have imagined. Each unspooling catastrophe and outrage was followed by something even worse.


I would very much like to be there today when it all comes to an end. Mostly for personal reasons, not really related to the moment -- that I had an up-close seat at the horror, I'd like to have a look at what I hope will be its exact opposite. But my life is different now. Much has happened in those eight years, and now here in Williamstown, with my family, my work, I have that "my back pages" feeling. In spite of everything Bush and his cronies did, I don't think it took anything away from the joy I felt at my wedding, or when I met my daughter.


And nothing Obama will do, for good or ill, will really change my world at a certain level either. Don't get me wrong. I can't think about this past election, and the gravity of this moment, without getting that feeling of words failing me, and with a rising flush of pride and joy that these American ideals are bright and true. But as Obama himself would be the first to tell you, these pretty thoughts are good and all, but not enough. As the Beatles put it, "the movement you need is on your shoulders."

Election Day

(Mila with our family's ballot yesterday afternoon at our polling place at Williamstown Elementary School.)

How strange and cheesy this morning, to take out the trash and see the sun come up over Mount Greylock on a bright and mild beautiful morning and getting all choked up and misty about this "new morning" in America.

I realize the awesome historic power of the moment yesterday, but to me it felt kind of anti-climactic. After the drama and struggle of the primaries, and the long lead amid a great storm of bad news, as the opposition got nastier and nastier, the win felt more like a relief than something to celebrate. It was just too hard for too long to even consider the alternative.

A few quick thoughts:

• I've been looking at this election through the lens of the books I've been reading through it. When we first got back in June, I found at the top of one of our box of books my old copy of Norman Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago. It is impossible not to be amazed at the symbolism that Obama's celebration was in Grant Park, the very place where the Democratic Party's long, nasty civil war began during the 1968 Convention.
• I've also been reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and have been reading 2008 as a pleasantly bizarro 1972. There was the long, ugly fight against the Party bosses, building a rare coalition of people who are getting screwed by the way things are, then having to face down the latest edition of the Land of Mordor spew coming from the right. But unlike in 1972, this time our candidate did everything right.
• I admit that I first started checking in with Fox News out of schadenfreude. But to my surprise, while every other outlet was ruminating on the enormity of the moment, Fox News was doing a much better job of reporting on the important House and Senate races. Also, Fox had no holograms.
• Senator McCain's concession speech was dignified and moving, and a reflection of the man he probably is rather than the shrill caricature he became in the heat of the campaign. But the mob scene he was speaking to -- booing and hooting and shouting -- was an embarrassment. This stubborn group of hateful dead-enders will make the next few years very unpleasant.
• Not everything can go right all the time, but voters in California approving a referendum banning same-sex marriage is a pretty tough worm in this apple. On this great day when we have really overcome prejudice and hate, it is disgusting that Americans would vote to willfully rob their friends, neighbors and relatives of a fundamental civil right. That fight goes on, and we'll win.

Regarding the politics of others

While abroad I was able to follow American politics pretty closely thanks to our wonderful wired modern world. But one of the great things about this past year is it has given me a little more perspective about how people look at one another's politics.

Consider the Sarah Palin nomination, which to me is probably the least funny thing to ever happen in American politics, but to the rest of the world is kinda amusing. In a column in the Telegraph last week, Mary Riddell lamented a bit jealously that UK conservatives weren't as colorful.

"We're playing personality politics without the personalities and, in that climate, woe betide any grey figure bold enough... to stick his eyebrows above the parapet.

"Can no Tory front-bencher conjure up a pregnant teenage daughter and a non-Etonian 'redneck' boyfriend?"

Crimmy, serious people debating serious issues about the nation and its future, without the reality television show bullsh*t? Sounds great to me.

When seen from the outside looking in, political life tends to flatten and simplify in distorting ways. On a serious note, it means that Americans refuse to acknowledge the political complexity and nuance of today's Russia in favor of a simple "the USSR is back!" narrative (which makes a dummy like Mikheil Saakashvili the inexplicable underdog freedom fighter). But on a personality level, it works the same way. We look at Nicolas Sarkozy, jet-setting with his hot new model/singer wife, or Silvio Berlusconi penning syrupy love songs with cruise ship lounge singers, and we ask ourselves how anybody could possibly take these people seriously. Well, here we have Sarah Palin, and I'm asking the same question (not two years ago, she was the mayor of a town smaller than Williamstown. Have you seen its "City Hall"?).

'Don't be afraid to turn the corner...'

All those copy-editors nervous about fitting "Zhirinovsky" in a banner headline can sleep easy. Dmitry Medvedev won, and which ever number the Central Election Commission settles on tomorrow is academic. We knew all along it would be in the low 60's -- well over the threshold to avoid a run-off, safely below Putin's 70 percent in 2004.**

As I noted earlier, there was no real excitement or interest in this election. Why bother? Elections here at best ratify previously made decisions; you don't choose anything. There's no uncertainty or drama. The only question was turnout, which if high enough could add some legitimacy to this particular episode in the development of "sovereign democracy."

But you'd still go see plays by Shakespeare or Chekhov even though you may know them by heart. So, how'd the most stage-managed transfer of power I've ever seen up close go off?

All day was like any other Sunday. It's been warmer here lately -- a little over 0 degrees. So it is the season of wet and melting already, when the four months-worth of cigarette-butts, beer cans, bottle caps, and gum wrappers that have hibernated in snow banks resurface. It is by no means spring, but isn't as clear and precise as winter either.

The television channels were set to begin election coverage at 9 p.m. We had on First Channel, and they had an elaborate count-down clock to tick off the seconds until the hour came. When it did, we saw numbers very similar to what the polls had predicted. Amazing.

There was really no point in paying close attention to the talking head chatter. We were busy feeding our daughter, giving her a bath, and checking in every now and then.

It seemed there was a concert near Red Square, where a who's-who of shitty pop singers were lip-synching along to songs about Russia "charging forward." Among them was Dima Kuldun, who my readers may remember for his performance at Eurovision 2007 -- for Belarus -- "working his magic." (That song, by the way, was written by Fillip Kirkorov, who last week was named a "People's Artist of Russia." That honored title now officially means nothing.)

A little later, I checked in with the 'Vesti' channel, a state-run all-news program. They actually ran a 25-minute long segment about how Russian celebrities voted. Not about how they voted, but just that they did actually vote (Remember, choices can be engineered, but turnout is much harder!). We saw director (and jackass) Nikita Mikhalkov, ballet legend Maya Plisetskaya, figure skater Evgeny Plushenko, and other stars of stage, screen, government stage, etc.. For each, they were shown walking into their polling place, where they'd produce their passport (just like ordinary people!) and then insert their completed ballot in the box. Then they would say something soulful about the importance of speaking out for RUssia's future.

It rapidly became difficult to pay attention anymore. We vaguely watched on First Channel more coverage of this concert. It was held in a strange location: down by the river, with the stage facing away from Red Square, and the crowd looked up to the stage with St. Basil's and the Spassky Tower behind it. It was immediately clear from the camera angles that it was impossible to tell precisely how many people were there. The ones that were were obviously the Nashi hardcore -- no doubt protected by several cordons of OMON civil servants. You could tell by the abundance of these weird, 10-foot long flexible polls that waving around from key points in the crowd. The flags atop them were a who's-who of obnoxious pro-Kremlin 'political technologies' like "Young Russia" and "Myestnie."

On stage was Lyubeh, the 'gopnik' heroes whose rock-folk-nationalist shtick is increasingly becoming a kind of official soundtrack. They were in the middle of their anthem "Davai Za" when... what's this...

The camera suddenly shifts to the Kremlin's Spassky Gate, and two lone figures are walking out... Can it be? ... why, it's Vladimir Vladimirovich... and Dmitry Anatolyevich!

President and successor stride through a curiously empty Red Square, through a gloomy mix of wet snow and sleet. They are alone together (save for the official state television camera), marching with satisfaction and pride to meet the people down by the river. A few minutes later they are on stage. They say nothing interesting. They go back into the Kremlin. So it goes.

Russian rock legends Mashina Vremeni took the stage next. They cut away after two songs so I don't know what they played next, but if their playlist included their legendary anti-Soviet anthem "Povorot," it would be criminally ironic ...

"We've told ourselves Not to depart from the straight path, But it was destined And frankly, everyone's afraid of change, But here it's all the same"...

"And there's no reason to be afraid If you men have strength within, Set out for this gate, And don't be afraid to turn the corner, Let this road be good."

Meanwhile, I actually can't sleep because I'm so worried about the primaries in Texas and Ohio. ** UPDATE (3/6): Well by golly, the CEC says Medvedev actually won 70.22 percent of the vote. I am actually surprised at how surprised I am at being surprised by anything about these elections.