Let's Talk About The Russian Election

I spent a week writing a blog post about today's Russian Presidential election, and after hours of wrangling with words and paragraphs, I decided to scrap most of it. I couldn't decide if I wanted to be serious or humerus, so I threw out most of the serious text, and threw in a few humorous images.

You can't talk about Russian presidencies without first mentioning Boris Yeltsin. I made that gif above last year, for something else, but since that something else will probably never be made, I stuck a version of it in here. Boris Yeltsin, what a man. The only politician ever to make Irish politicians look good. Do you remember when he flew into Ireland in 1994 for a big state visit, and was too drunk to even get off the plane. They apparently circled six times before landing, in the hope that he would sober up. Ironically, he made a better Soviet politician. In the early days of his career, he gained the respect of the public by weeding corruption out of the USSR, only to become hugely corrupt himself, in the Post-Communist era.




Some Russians decided to stage protests in the lead up to this election. Unsettled by what they saw as vote rigging during the 2011 legislative elections. Much like the "Occupy" protests that we've seen world wide, there was no unifying voice to the opposition; no consistency to their message:  "We want things to change, but we don't know for what or why." Nothing gives a clearer example of this confusion, than how Putin was portrayed in these gatherings. On one side, you see mocked-up posters, where Putin is dressed as an old moribund Communist leader, but right beside that you see the red flags of Russia's current Communist party. In other posters, Putin is given the crown of a Tsar, and beside that are masses of opponents waving the old imperial flag of Russia. Everyone just wants a piece of the action it seems. And don't get me started on the "White Power" freaks...



I laugh when watching media coverage on Putin. Stuff like: "He's attempting to nationalise oil reserves, a clear sign that Russia is in the hands of the Mafia." But of course! Because we all know that the fire-sale of these reserves after the collapse of the Soviet Union really helped Russia recover. (We'll see how strong Ireland becomes, when every square inch of it is sold off and privatised). Putin is constantly demonised, but never is any proof offered. Much was made of the case of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. At the time, media plastered pictures, statements and video of Litvinenko's father saying that "Putin killed my son." Now, only a few weeks ago, Litvinenko's father has publicly asked for Putin's forgivness, saying it was wrong for him to slander Putin with murder. He said he was preyed upon and used by the media, while in a weakened state over the loss of his son. This hatred in the media is not just left for Putin, Russia itself has always been seen as "evil" in the West. If it wasn't Hitler saying they were Jew loving Bolshevik rat scum, it was Ronald Regan calling the USSR an "evil empire". That was a serious paragraph, so let's have a video of Putin doing some ballet.



Fair elections... what is a fair election. Does America have fair elections. A two party system where it's hard to tell who is the Republican and who is the Democrat. Oh that's right, the Republican is the one who drops bombs on other countries, whereas the Democrat is the one who offers subsidised health care, while dropping bombs on other countries. And let's look at Ireland. We have a lovely open and "fair" democracy, and we used it in force last time around. We voted for the rebellious sounding opposition parties, who promised that glorious notion of "change". Surprise, surprise, what did we get? Even more of the same. Is this democracy? Democracy is just a nice way for crypto-hegemony to trick citizens into thinking their views actually count. That said, here's a picture of Putin hugging Kim Jong-Il.



What Russia the world needs right now, is a strong Russian government. No weakened flim-flam, to bow to America's self-interest approach to "world peace". No one should own a monopoly on what only they deem freedom and democracy. It's no lame NWO conspiracy to say that the US are deliberately encroaching on Russian boundaries to gain a stronger hand in world influence. Russia needs a leader to deflect these advances. For all the talk of Mutually Assured Destruction during the Cold War, some of humanities greatest achievements happened during this period. A power play between two giants can offer up positives for the globe. And look, Putin feeds a baby moose!



Maybe his face is full of botox, maybe he can't sing as well as Obama or play the piano with more than three fingers, maybe he's an ex-KGB hard liner, maybe his wife has magically vanished, but he's good for Russia, and he's good for the world. He tells the Americans to go fuck themselves and that's good enough for me. Europe has destroyed itself in the pursuit of gold and bureaucracy, Russia is now the best chance the world has at keeping an equilibrium. 

Is there even  a human capable of replacing Putin...

When the time comes, and the opposition finds a unified voice, and can show why they are better than Putin, then perhaps will be their time to rise up and smash Putin's "Commie-Imperialist-Oligarch-Mafia-Fascist" rule, but I'm not seeing another "Ulyanov" amongst the raggle-taggle bunch of confused protesters that are currently on offer though. Choice for the sake of it, is worthless.