The simple reason why the Russians love Putin.

[DetlefK]

Imagine the following alternative history:

In the 1980s President Reagan is bankrupting the US with his Star Wars-program, when suddenly an economic crisis occurs. The US is on the verge of bankruptcy and can no longer maintain its military.

Drastic scale-backs on military expenditures. Foreign military-bases dissolved. NATO collapses.

The US has lost the Cold War.

At the same time, Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika and the civil-rights demonstrations of Eastern Europe of the late 1980s lead to a restart of Communism/Socialism to a less oppressive version. Russia and the Soviet Union are now the strongest military and diplomatic power in the world.

Ultra-capitalist oligarchs are pillaging the US for whatever they can and corrupt politicians are all-too-willing to help them. The US loses any good-will and reputation it had. Nobody any longer gives a fuck about the opinion of the US. They are a corrupt and poor failed state.



Now consider this:

A politician, ex-CIA, rises and declares war on the oligarchs and corruption.

He gets the US-economy going again. He makes the US-military a force to be reckoned with again.

He dives deep, very deep, into patriotic jingoism, american exceptionalism and christian tradition.

He casts the US as a pious force of equality, love and peace and demonizes Russia as sinful, corrupt warmongers.

He makes you proud again the be an American.



Would you vote for such a guy, even after he becomes a dictator and does away with civil-rights and the free press?

You would.

[Skittles]

1. ???

no I would not

[DetlefK]

4. You would vote against the guy fighting corruption and the 0.1%?

You would vote against the guy who brought the economy back from the brink of collapse?

You would vote against the guy who routinely calls for diplomatic negotiations to end wars?

[Skittles]

6. I WOULD NOT "VOTE" FOR A DICTATOR

[secondwind]

2. Nope.

[cbreezen]

3. But, I'm a citizen of the United States...

I would never vote for Trump, even if he we were ex CIA!

[atreides1]

5. The real simple reason

Is because the majority of the Russian people still have the same peasant mentality that they had under the Tsars and the Communists!

It's in their DNA...

Just my opinion!

[DetlefK]

7. Yeah... Communism ended 30 years ago, but they still have the same mentality...

[Voltaire2]

8. So Russians are just stupid.

Unlike us brilliant Americans.

Yeah, that must be it.

[Cary]

11. Not stupid

Developing Western cultures and norms isn't as easy as it sounds. We are seeing right now how easy it is to tear down Western cultures and norms and then how hard it will be to restore them.

[MFM008]

9. The Russians

Rigged that election........

[Alpeduez21]

10. Sounds like the chaos that Obama calmed. He wasn't loved.

[DetlefK]

13. I hope you realize that the 2008 recession and the Cold War were of different magnitudes.

[bullimiami]

12. Do they love Putin? Some do as some love Trump. But how many really?