PUTIN’S STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS: IT’S THE WEST STUPID !

According to President Putin:

1. Western governments are trying to raise a new iron curtain around Russia.
2. Some countries would like Russia to be dismantled like Yugoslavia.
3. Even if the events and coup in Ukraine had not taken place, even if Crimea had not been annexed, the West would have come up with another reason to contain Russia’s growing capabilities, to influence it or even better use it for its own goals.

The new buzz word in Moscow these days is cynicism (tsinizm) …. Western Cynicism of course!

72% of Russians think that Putin is doing a good job.

Interestingly cynicism was built into the very structure of Putinist power, assembled vertically, from the top down, with the people at the top appointing underlings who would be accommodating and loyal administrators, rather than competent and professionally qualified specialists. This process is based on negative selection principles, where the most unprincipled, ‘flexible’ and adaptable kinds of people are admitted to the corridors of power. These fortunate functionaries, at whatever level, enjoy not only various bonuses and privileges, but also the psychological comfort due to someone who has asserted himself by disqualifying Another. However, the institutional consequence of such a power structure is a constant loss of quality in the political system, the Parliamentary corpus and government as a whole. Every election brings a more mediocre bunch of MPs, who have lost any responsibility to the electorate. Their social capital is based purely on their lobbying power, their connections with the people at the top. The public consequences of this selection system are Russia’s daily corruption scandals. The very legitimacy of this absolutist regime rests on the systematic putting-down of others. The most obvious example of this is the Russian public’s attitude to their country’s judicial system. The selective nature of the Russian judicial system encourages people’s alienation from politics, their civic and political passivity and their fatalism .