[baybal2]

I will call this a "Elzin Effect":

— When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake

— Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA.

— It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops:

— “He commented that if the Soviet people, who often must wait in line for goods, saw U.S. supermarkets, ‘there would be a revolution.’ ”

The Internet lets people experience pretty much the same, except do so while being on the other side of the public/government divide, and in fact, there are revolutions happening.

What I myself believe that a lot of people in the West kind of realise how this work in basics, but only the people who grew in the unfree world will continue further to note that what matters even more is what he said later:

— “Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” he said.

Elzin was said to be almost crying from this realisation. He saw it's impossible to recover the control of the party when, in a few years, it will be not only him, but tens of thousands of other USSR's officials visiting USA.

The later made themselves to feel that they look like clowns in eyes of people who been there, and saw this. These officials will forever stop believing in the power of CPSU, because they saw who really have all the wealth, power, and political potency in this world.

Those officials will stop wanting to be high ranking functionaries, and will want to do business themselves in hopes of achieving even a tiny fraction of wealth they saw in the USA, or even drop everything, and move to the West themselves (A huge portion of Russian immigration to the Brighton Beach in early nineties were, in fact, families of Soviet officials, and other elites.)

Above, was what the third man in the power vertical, in the second most powerful world country at the time said. Now, imagine how much will this crash the worldview of some "big guy" official in a small town, or a village in the third world, and how they will feel. They too will stop caring for their duties, cash out the treasury, and run.

The Internet is equally potent in erasing the faith in the government of both the governed, and the ones doing governing.

[sergeykish]

Travel to Europe is still eye opening experience. People not stressed out, quite happy and relaxed. It feels safe, something that's not possible to buy.

In west Ukraine a lot of people been there. I think that's what divided country. In no way I am going to support pro Russia policy once I've been to Europe.

Citizens visiting prosperous neighbor country is worst enemy of authoritarian regime.

[bonoboTP]

That Yeltsin story is a great anecdote but surely the Soviets did enough (and way more) spying to know basic and everyday facts about the US, like whether supermarket shelves are stocked. I mean, how much does it take to know this fact?

[baybal2]

> I mean, how much does it take to know this fact?

I believe nothing can dispel the disbelief people outside of ex-Union feel about what you point to, other than living through that surreal time, but it was really like this.

Out of all Soviet defectors to the West, the biggest groups were: 1. diplomats, 2. spies, 3. military. All who were entitled to see that.

[082349872349872]

1976 soviet TV docco about New York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2_olezbbA Didn't see any supermarkets, closest I found in a quick scrub was a shopping bag at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2_olezbbA&t=1100

San Francisco supermarket in Little Italy getting plenty of deliveries? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swdtgcaFess&t=1085

California (1974) orchards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytE_RDrsmMg&t=445 and of course, the Mouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytE_RDrsmMg&t=1127

Also no supermarkets along the 1976 Mississippi, but they did make it to the French Quarter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7xo7rtSwwI&t=1615

Luxury shopping in Dallas (1978) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQzMJd4kiM&t=1942

No supermarkets in Pittsburg (1975) but for some reason they went to the unemployment lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgfq1isLUUI&t=1200

Los Angeles, with more Disneyland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmZMJvFVKiA&t=2725 (and wide freeways with lots of cars)

1974 DC has plenty of monuments, white house, pentagon, protestors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvy2fYVs5iw (but the cars have changed in the intervening half century)

[baybal2]

> 1976 soviet TV docco about New York:

Even such documentaries were curtailed, nor aired, or aired only in Moscow and very later, or screened privately.

This particular ones seem to be aimed not on your average union's citizen, and it feels much more like "internal propaganda." Such things were screened to lower level CPSU members, and whomever amounted to social elites as prophylaxis exactly against such scenario as above,

[082349872349872]

I've also run across a few major US cities in filmstrips on https://diafilmy.su , were those censored as well?

[baybal2]

I never saw USSR myself, but for few very blurry memories of my first years of life I barely recall.

But from my lifelong interest studying how countries work, and fail, I would tell that an average union's citizen would be given a chance to see such inoculatory dosages of "truths" a dozen or so times in his life, the more the higher the rank the person has in the society. And that for most, the exposure to it will pass more or less without consequences, given how watered down it was.

I believe their rationale for engaging in the later was to influence their own elites as much as they can until the level where the benefit from it comes close to the harm from truth stirring up "proles."

I'd say a half of all adult, moderately intellectually developed, working age people by eighties had an idea in principle that:

1. USA is more well off than the union, some even knew by how much from smuggled Western press.

2. That all communists are liars, and that the CPSU is now corrupt beyond salvation.

3. That Radio Liberty is probably not all lie.

4. USA is probably less corrupt than USSR, or at least their bosses don't steal more than half of worker's salary.

5. That it's possible that not all Americans were millionaires, but nevertheless, even some non-millionaires may be able to afford a car in USA...

6. That CPSU keeps microdosing them with much distorted, and watered down depictions of reality in, and outside of the union, in just enough dosage as to preserve CPSU's last vestiges of credibility, as to make what they say not entirely silly.

[082349872349872]

Thank you. That seems to confirm the first half of my hypothesis for the rise of ЕР in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24698473 , do you have any opinions on the validity of the second half?

> "neo-feudalism is what one gets when russians spend the 1980's deciding the capitalists had valid criticisms of communism, then the 1990's deciding the communists had valid criticisms of capitalism."

where by neo-feudalism I mean I believe the basic deal Putin has with the populace is: (1) living standards will increase, (2) what corruption there is will keep its ill-gotten gains at home and not flee to London, and (3) governors may fleece their region according to taste but if they're so blatant as to cause a major scandal they'll be out.

[srtjstjsj]

> . USA is probably less corrupt than USSR, or at least their bosses don't steal more than half of worker's salary.

The US is working hard to close that gap.

[solarexplorer]

It is not the same to know something from a book or tv and experiencing it in first person. * Just ask any person from east Germany who went to the west after the wall came down. Even though they knew it all from tv etc, actually being there and seeing it themselves made a huge impression on everybody. After that the communist elites in the east were immediately powerless.

* I was one of those persons and I can assure you that it was very impressive and changed everything...

[mc32]

Propaganda and indoctrination make it hard to believe what your eyes see. It takes years to believe your own eyes, so it’s no surprise that most people would dismiss to them unverifiable accounts that differed from what they heard daily.

[kmeisthax]

Most Soviet citizens weren't spies or diplomats and had no means or authorization to travel outside of the iron curtain. Pravda was never going to tell the masses about this and that was enough.

[bena]

If you were to look at stuff coming out of North Korea, you'd see the veneer of wealth and plenty as well.

So the simple answer is "We lie about this, therefore, they must also be lying about this."

[ben_w]

The spies would know, but would they risk taking their handlers for fear or being accused of being corrupted by capitalism? Ditto upward every level of the chain.

You don’t even need to fear being shipped off to Siberia; judging by the news, the current administrations of both the USA and the UK are making people afraid to tell them the inevitable consequences of their decisions, and that’s just fear of losing their current jobs.

[refurb]

This story reminds me of when the Soviets fought their way into Germany in 1945, and eventually Berlin. The Red Army soldiers saw the wealth that Germany possessed and it pissed them off even more. They thought "why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?".

The theory is that it was a contribution to the brutal treatment of Germans immediately before and after the end of the war (beyond the retribution for the German atrocities in the East).

[uzakov]

> The Red Army soldiers saw the wealth that Germany possessed and it pissed them off even more. They thought "why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?".

Can you please share the story? This is the first time I hear of this

[refurb]

Oh man, I've read too many books to remember where that came from. Might have been one of Antony Beevor's books.

It wasn't described as a main motivation, just another contributing factor for revenge. Which seems entirely understandable - someone with a better life than you decides to invade your country and massacre your fellow country man.

[uzakov]

I was born in Kazakhstan, one of the ex-USSR countries and had a chance to speak and help WW2 veterans in my town. Many of them shared their memories of the World War 2 and being honest none of them mentioned that factor.

Obviously it's hard to have a solid data on these kind of things but I'd be cautious about believing this. On the other side if any of them felt that way, it would be doubtful they'd publicly share that.

[srtjstjsj]

Shades of Osama bin Laden there.

[ardy42]

> The theory is that it was a contribution to the brutal treatment of Germans immediately before and after the end of the war (beyond the retribution for the German atrocities in the East).

IIRC, the Germans also treated Soviet POWs far more badly than they did Western POWs.

[shrubble]

Might I suggest reading the propaganda of Ilya Ehrenburg that was distributed to the soldiers entering German territory...

[watwut]

Given how many villages were burned out as part of German expansion and ethnic cleansing, also given the nature of Stalin regime, it is quite unlikely that Russians needed to see German riches to get pissed and violent.

The second world war in the East was brutal, even more brutal then the one on the West, which was super brutal anyway.

[refurb]

Agreed. That's why I said "pissed them off even more" and didn't say "that's why they were pissed".

[watwut]

To me this sounds more the the sort of thing foreigners tend to project on Eastern Europe (or whoever is outsider) then anything having anything to do with history or sociology.

The story is generally unlikely to be "general sentiment" of Russian soldiers. Among other things, there was enough mandatory political propaganda targeted at soldiers for them to not ask questions like this all that much, not loud.

> why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?

This question implies that soldiers assume the war was started because aggressor was poor and struggling, attacking out of no other choice. That gives quite a lot of benefit of doubt toward heavily demonized enemy in the war.

[m463]

there was a similar sort of story (maybe was it in wired?) that american television was treated as a fantasy until the opening credits of some popular tv show maybe in the credits panned out to see thousands of unfaked homes, each with a swimming pool.

[romanoderoma]

> and in fact, there are revolutions happening.

it would be interesting to know who's benefiting from these revolutions

it would also be interesting to understand if they really are revolutions or not

I am more inclined to call them riots and I am afraid that a number of them are steered by people with very bad intentions

Internet simply made propaganda easier and more effective, for the good but also for he bad

p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down.

We in Italy knew about American malls and supermarkets, we had them but we usually didn't use them as much as we do today to buy groceries because our culture was based on local smaller shops selling fresh food.

[baybal2]

> p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down.

I beg you thing otherwise. I spent my first 5 years of life, 1990-1995, with my mother shuttling in between a country which I would rather not name, and Russia, where my father lived until she was able to secure Russian citizenship, and a Russian birth certificate for me.

People in early nineties Russia were going crazy from all novelties they saw for the first time in their lives. Either in 1995, or in 1996, the first Western (actually South Korean) supermarket in the town was JAMPACKED with people for months after opening despite it being quite a huge warehouse store style supermarket, and very far away from the city. People were making reservations to get into it.

On the other hand, people previously in position of social prominence, affluence, and power were in a such deep shock for years on end, that some very literally died from starvation because they didn't know how the money are supposed to be earned from something that is not a government.

[romanoderoma]

I'm from Italy, my grandfather lived in Russia, during and soon after WWII.

I wasn't saying that Russia in the 90s was an happy place like the cocaine driven USA of the 90s.

Russia in the 90s was dealing with the ruins left by the regime.

I know of people that died because they poisoned themselves with home made vodka.

In Italy people were going crazy from all the novelties too, like any novelty people are attracted to them, you could see kids walking down the streets all dressed like Andre Agassi, all with the same haircut, even those that had no money to afford them, a friend of mine was caught many times stealing from the new mall that had recently opened in Rome.

It might surprise you, but the first mall in Rome was opened in 1989. Not so long ago.

It was fun at first, it soon became the most boring thing to do.

The first Mc Donald's in Italy was opened in Piazza di Spagna (Spanish steps) in 1987, 40 years after their first opening in the US.

The first Mc Donald's in Russia opened in 1990, not a lot of difference there.

Ironically, probably thanks to the strong US military presence, Germany had its first Mc Donald's in 1971.

There were people that saw one in Germany (probably agents from East Germany as well) 16 years before us.

Of course the difference is we could travel to US, there was no restriction for us to go there.

But on average people didn't know much about US culture up until the middle 80s.

We actually knew USSR a lot better than the US of A, just as an example see the story of Togliattigrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolyatti

They mainly knew stories about their grandfathers who went to America between the two wars.

Most of them never came back, the only read about it from letters.

But what brought USSR down wasn't the discovery of the supermarkets, it was the war in Afghanistan that left the once powerful Eastern Block with no money and forced them to declare bankruptcy.

[082349872349872]

The war in Afghanistan[1] was on the spending side, on the income side was the double whammy of oil price and (because oil is denominated in it) dollar decline. I think Fahd probably deserves a bit more credit for kneecapping the USSR than he commonly gets.

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttzAsH1yM6E&t=60 (along the lines of: officers, you brought sons back to their mothers)

[1] I remember back when the Taliban were freedom fighters instead of terrorists. In the interim, I doubt their theology has changed significantly (but any outside weaponry is probably currently labelled in a different script).

[romanoderoma]

War in Afghanistan was a proxy for the cold war where primarily US and UK (but also China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) backed the mujahideen (including Taliban) to keep USSR spending a vast amount of money in the region while also cutting their income.

They succeeded in their intent and the fall of the USSR was so sudden that hundreds of soviet tanks were abandoned on the field

http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/08/ussr-red-army-tanks-gra...

A few years after the end of the war US left the region, refused to help with the reconstruction and handled control to Pakistan that in exchange for routes and security made pacts with local warlords and the Taliban.

With the consequences we know.

I wish I could understand what the Russian Walter White is singing in that YouTube video!

[082349872349872]

The russian is closer to Walter White than you may think. As I heard the story, he was a practicing MD for years before his mixtapes became popular, then switched to performing full time.

If you're really motivated try looking up офицеры текст песни ("officers text of-the-song") and use machine translation from there. Afghan war songs is a major genre.

[sergeykish]

Revolution is in the mind. What was in Ukraine, what's happening in Belarus is a decision to defeat fear, claim the rights and make a change,

[netsharc]

At least Yeltsin's (why Elzin?) observations are probably quite accurate. But nowadays it seems like people are getting mad based on partial information (sometimes just 140 characters) or lies and misinformation. For example the paranoia against Muslims is based on incorrect perceptions of how many Muslims there are: https://www.statista.com/statistics/952909/perceptions-on-re... , and this on top of the perception that having Muslims in the community is a negative thing.

Maybe it's also a lot of the "grass is greener on the other side" or "in the future". US voters heard Obama's message of hope and attached to it everything they wanted to be better in their lives. And the same with Trump's message of "Great Again".

[pjc50]

"Elzin" is a romanisation of Ельцин. It's not the usual one, as it leads to a different pronunciation. baybal2 appears to be (from this and previous comments) a native Russian speaker who remembers the Soviet Union.

[baybal2]

The "Intellectuals" in the West think of commoners no better than CPSU members though of their "prole" chattels.

I'd say common people are even better than them at making thought connections when things relate to daily life, and something obvious.

I highly, highly doubt that you can make somebody truly "mad with 140 characters," Most proletarians who go on fuming these days are ones who genuinely are pissed off at something very obvious to them about the government, but that something is not that obvious to people up on the social ladder, who only see what is on the surface, like the calls to "burn those A, or B, or C on the stake."

[romanoderoma]

> but that something is not that obvious to people up on the social ladder.

I think that's a bit of simplification.

The idea that people in charge cannot understand them it's as old as modern humanity (hence 5-6 thousands years old)

I believe that a good part of that "being easily pissed" has been engineered by the same people you think are too up on the social ladder to understand.

What bothers me is that most of those who are genuinely pissed are pissed about things that don't actually matter for them.

What does it matter to the proletarians if a famous person (say an actor) says something pro or against Brexit (for example). You have your vote, you cast it and that's what really matters to your category: representation.

Have you ever read the comments below some of these tweets?

I do not think that kind of reaction is really genuine or has anything to do with the situation of working class in 2020.

I could be wrong, but I think that that kind of knee jerk reaction has been fabricated.

To make an extremely simplified example: in an episode of "the boys" (the TV show) one of the new character says to an old timer who's have more followers than her (the incumbent in the posted article) something on the line of "you have followers, I have soldiers"

People up on the social ladder are up there also because they are good at exploiting human weaknesses and aren't afraid nor ashamed of doing it for their own personal gain.

[mgkimsal]

> What does it matter to the proletarians if a famous person (say an actor) says something pro or against Brexit (for example). You have your vote, you cast it and that's what really matters to your category: representation.

Sort of in agreement with you, but on this, I think there's good reason to be concerned with something like this. If people with social influence disagree with your position and are public about it, they are in a position to influence more people than you can, and your position is less likely to be heard/adopted/enacted/etc.

I'm not sure that's actually why people get upset/involved when famous people hold opposing views - I think it's probably something more visceral - but I can say I don't want views in opposition to mine to get amplified favorable treatment in the media.

Perhaps secondarily, people get upset with famous folks holding opposing views because it ruins our perceptions of them. We often think we 'know' famous people on some level, and when they break out of the model we have of them, it's bothersome.

[romanoderoma]

> If people with social influence disagree with your position and are public about it, they are in a position to influence more people than you can,

Yes, it does.

But in a different way than people think.

First of all, it only reinforces the positions pro or con, it doesn't actually move votes, it polarizes them though.

So in theory the best reaction would be to ignore the statement if you are against it, to not give it more exposure.

Secondly, attacking that person personally, commenting on social networks, usually with fake names, I doubt solves anything at all.

> Perhaps secondarily, people get upset with famous folks holding opposing views because it ruins our perceptions of them

That's my impression too, people, but I should simply say humans, we are all affected in a way or another, usually don't like to have their opinions challenged, because it puts them in the position of reconsidering their choices and we kinda have a natural protection against it that made us form tribes that lasted because members shared a common view and common beliefs against "the others".

Probably if that famous person is someone you follow and then you find out that they don't actually think like you do or like you believed they did, it can feel like a betrayal.

But on the other hand, I love Ted Nugent's music while I completely despise the man behind it...

I'm not shocked when he says what he says, I simply don't understand how that same man made something I like so much.

[TeMPOraL]

Exactly. I've noticed two types of outrage most commonly voiced by the general population on the Internet:

- Outrage about things that have no bearing on their lives. That's, in a big part, continuous dramas about what a famous person said, or - if no celebrity said anything controversial this week - about what some random people are saying. This includes drama as spectator sports - like few people get offended at each other, but it gets magnified to a million-large audience, because everyone gets offended at an offense.

- Outrage about things that have bearing on their lives, but misguided and misdirected. Knee-jerk reactions to government decisions, as well as general politics, are a lion's share of that. This is the problem with simplistic views, that manifest on the social media. If you talked with any random person individually about an issue that affects them, you could likely help them reach a nuanced position - that takes into account second-order effects, and reflects the understanding that most policy decisions involve optimizing across the entire population. But on social media, almost all you see is repeating soundbites and arguing in circles.

To a large extent, both of those types I can confidently classify as manufactured by media, traditional and social alike. Not entirely intentionally - it's a bunch of feedback loops we're stuck in[0]. But the consequence is that exposure to the hivemind can easily drag you way past "declining faith in government", and all the way to idiocy.

--

[0] - Some of the pieces from which the loops are assembled: traditional media earns money through ads, so will systematically prioritize things that generate more pageviews. Algorithms on social media optimize for engagement, which also means promoting things people are statistically likely to engage with. Humans seem to have a natural tendency to pay attention to the gossips about people of highest status. Thinking is hard, knee-jerk reactions are easy. Soundbites are easier to digest and have more immediate emotional impact than well-thought-through, nuanced arguments. Add all that together, and you get a strong, sustained pressure to dumb down our social discourse.

[thaumasiotes]

> The idea that people in charge cannot understand them it's as old as modern humanity (hence 5-6 thousands years old)

There isn't great evidence for authority structures that would justify the label "person in charge" 6 thousand years ago. History generally starts around 5 thousand years ago, with the development of writing.

(Were there people in charge of other people 6 thousand years ago? Sure, it's not unlikely. But Çatalhüyük is a more or less urban area 9 thousand years ago; if we're going on what's likely, your estimate of 6 thousand years is much too low.)

[romanoderoma]

AFAIK the Sumerian king Enmerkar was ruling the city of Uruk around 4500 BC

That's where my estimate comes from, but I'm not archeologist, I might well be wrong

[thaumasiotes]

Enmerkar appears to be known from the Sumerian king lists, where he is one of the pre-flood monarchs who reigned for hundreds of years.

I wouldn't put much weight on any estimate of when he ruled.

[pydry]

Time magazine once bragged on its cover how the US helped Yeltsin win the election: https://off-guardian.org/2018/02/19/yanks-to-the-rescue-time...

He was essentially Russia's Trump although a) probably a lot more in America's pocket than vice versa and b) it's difficult to overstate how much Russia suffered under him. They suffered enormously in the 90s - quality of life and life expectancies declined enormously.

Now, if you imagine an alcoholic Trump who has wreaked massive havoc on the economy, driving Americans into poverty going on a state visit to Russia and fawning over, for example, a caviar tasting... how would you interpret that?

[baybal2]

> They suffered enormously in the 90s - quality of life and life expectancies declined enormously.

If you lived in the Potemkin village №1 — Moscow, then yes. Having myself lived in a part of Russia where light wasn't shining back in soviet times, nineties were such a giant breath of fresh air, and opportunity.

For most of people there, it was a never before seen opportunity to change their predicament to live in the empire's cloaca — the union's Far East. Were they to continue live as in USSR, most there would've probably kept living on a few dollars a day.

In 1993, longshoremen, and dockers in Vladivostok at my father's business were getting $300-$500 a month, almost as much as average bankers in Moscow. It was enough for somewhat comfortable living for most.

[082349872349872]

Vladivostok? I guess it could've been worse in soviet times. At least your father wasn't in Magadan.

It sounds like you're a generation or so too young, but do you have any opinions on КИНО? Any recommendations for Vladivostok (or general Pacific) music groups I should look up?

[baybal2]

No music, tv,radio, or anything there. The city was closed back in the union, no exit, or entry without a blessing from KGB, partcom, and the pope roman.

People were living alone along with their boredom, and their hatred.

[082349872349872]

That's a shame. With no local scene, and no radio to get leningrad programs like https://naftalin.radiorecord.ru , it must've been nothing but saunas, accordion, lox and great patriotic stuff like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dciV2ruUIsI on infinite repeat. My condolences.

Edit: if only you'd had radios, you would've heard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RVeoPQ8FiM . The pics seem to be recent, but the song's from 1985 Moscow. (Only 125 years? That's a boomtown: no wonder the USSR had so many similarities with the US. The city near me has been populated since about 6'000 BC, but only has a twentieth of the habitants.)

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGbzCBLmfJg

The アニメ clips, as well as the album cover, hint at japanese influence. I guess japan is awfully close by, by which uncle youtube leads us to a bonus bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAHX_Oefm3c

[vmception]

Most Americans I know that have spent more than a week in Western or Central Europe, want to be in Western or Central Europe.

Not quite the same as Russia, but the concept being undermined is that USSR was a superpower that fell leaving only the US. When, at this point, most countries that were aligned with US offer better infrastructure and average-case opportunities for people, while dulling the best-case of rapid excess wealth attainment and practically nullifying the worst case of poverty, incarceration and marginalization which is a constant threat in the US.

Without a millenium of geopolitical baggage, Americans don't really care which country in Europe and sample them all for an unparalleled combination of benefits.

[pydry]

>the concept being undermined is that USSR was a superpower

If Time magazine is bragging about having installed the puppet president that came on a state visit to your supermarket I would have thought that concept was well and truly undermined already.

I don't see how that supermarket having a fancy fish counter really contributes to that other than as a publicity stunt.

[082349872349872]

Brezhnev may have had the Trump eye: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/d2/5b/79d25b5058348a24e117...

I don't think Trump has ever been accused of wandering around Moscow blotto, but Putin certainly got a laugh when he claimed he was certain that, Trump's hotel having been in close proximity to the Bolshoi, the future POTUS, a family man, would undoubtedly have taken the opportunity to sample the culture of Russia instead of that of its girls of low social responsibility.

[vmception]

Yeah that’s cool I’m just here to collect transactions fees, you want that treasury going to a UBS in Switzerland or a Wells Fargo in USA