Let's Not Become Like Russia

This morning, I had an opportunity to hear an interview with a Russion historian Leonid Melchin.

He brought up several salient points about contemporary Russia and its foreign and domestic policy:

First, he said, it's always much easier to look for big external enemies to shift blame for your internal problems and to justify doing nothing to address the smaller quality-of-life issues in your back yard.  It's much more glamorous to fight with NATO than to go rebuild your failing infrastructure or take care of your ailing neighbor.

Second, Russia's culture has been in ruins for several generations starting with the elimination of the farmers and the expulsion of intelligentsia after the Revolution.  The Civil War actually caused millions of people to flee, and millions of others to die or to lose everything, including social influence, resulting in largely uneducated, uncouth people being next in line to take over the country right after the middle class revolutionary leaders, many of whom themselves later perished in purges.  That ruined the ethical underpinnings of the society resulting in country being ruled by thugs for many decades, and adopting a largely criminal based form of governance and life philosophy.

Finally, perennial apathy and laziness are preventing people from assuming any level of responsibility on an individual level. For instance, Russia's peripheral regions are doing nothing to engage in self-improvements, largely relying on the non-existent and corrupt system of subsidies from Moscow, under the excuses that the Chinese are eventually going to take over everything anyway, so there is no reason to put any effort into improving one's own life. Melchin, however, argues that it's patently untrue. The influence of the Chinese is greatly exaggerated, and to some extent, failure to address existing economic and social issues creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of these regions becoming depleted of human resources and ripe for take over by migrant populations.

Moreover, it's nonsense to believe the fatalistic refrain that sooner or later, Russia will fall apart and become at best a federation of weak autonomies. The federal system, he says, is very strong, and no one is going anywhere. Nor is Russia going to die out due to low demographics, aging population, alcoholism and so forth. All these are significant problems, but Russia has gone through a great deal of turmoil over the centuries, including persistent economic issues such as poor economy and lack of viable infrastructure, and yet here we are, with Russia still boasting a high population and significant involvement in international affairs. However, the course it's pursuing is less North-Korea bound, than completely irrelevance and inaction on all fronts.

Why should this be of any interest to the United States?  Because the same populist claims and excuses are reverberating both on the left and on the right of the US society, creating the danger that despite the strong economy and other achievements we have accomplished through the history of good work ethic and dedication to upward mobility, defeatist philosophy that seeks to blame our internal weaknesses on outward forces, such as immigrants, "the Establishment", corporations, the left, the right, and frankly, anyone but the weakening local cultures and lack of consistent education to growth, education, and self-improvement is putting us on the same deteriorating path as Russia, our foil for endless excuse-making regarding the internal weaknesses resulting from bad decisionmaking of the Obama administration, and various private and public actors.

Populist nationalism (as opposed to healthy, growth-oriented nationalism) is the last result of the excuse seekers, who seek to shift the blame elsewhere rather than to actually find and implement solutions that will address existing problems internally. Bannonism philosophy sounds appealing to patriots starved for a healthy national self-image, but in reality it provides little relief who those genuinely dedicated to greatness. Instead, it's a distraction from a necessary conversation about the improvement in education, ethics, social values, and the strengthening of our communities that we should be having as a permanent long-term solution to the various problems assailing our culture. Indeed, a reactionary mindset of trying to provide quick fixes to external attacks ignores the structural internal weakness that help view all such developments as attacks and downsides rather than opportunities.

Our national conversation has become excessively focused on symptoms, rather than causes. And while we are busy playing wack-a-mole with cultural and social issues, the causes persist, affecting even those who claim to stand against all that is harmful and in favor of all that is beneficial. Pausing for a bit of self-reflection as to how we came to be in a place when identity politics and finger=pointing dominate discussion on both sides of the aisle when that was exactly the sort of thing that conservatives claimed to stand against to begin with might do us some good.