Moscow Rules

The recent election getting big time media coverage and by bloggers was in... you guessed it: Venezuela. To the extent the mainstream covers Putin at all their story-line concerns his psychology. Edging, of course, ever closer to the official worry that Putin is a new Russian tyrant, anti-democratic, perhaps even anti-capitalistic beneath his manifest enmity towards the oligarchs. Yeah, I'd like to know more about his psychology, too, but so far I haven't seen any reliable sources. What's really important here, though, is what Putin's done. And never mind the mainstream: it's noteworthy that the Left has had nothing much to say about Putin, good or bad. But perhaps the Left should pay attention. Putin put a stop to international "capitalists" scavenging broken Russian fields like a horde of locusts. He had the sense to tell Western "democracy" reformers to mind their own business, eschewing yet another color revolution. He seems disinclined to cooperate with Washington's "bombs away" attitude towards international affairs. Domestically, development continues apace and wealth is finally getting spread around such that even ordinary Russians (finally) benefit. In short, Putin is giving Russian nationalism a good name. And that, I think, is what makes many on the Left queasy — distrustful as good intellectuals are supposed to be, almost by second nature, of anything nationalistic in character. A pity, because the U.S. surely needs a bit more nationalistic thinking of our own.