I think it’s great that Putin is getting divorced. This tradition where politicians pretend to have good marriages and then entertain the entire world with their miserable little affairs is too ridiculous. Remember how stupid the Clintons looked because they forgot to get divorced on time?
Also, Putin’s divorce will put a damper on the attempts by the Russian Orthodox Church to control the country. With only 2% of the population actually practicing, it is a disgrace to see the priests become ubiquitous in the country’s politics. Putin’s declaration that he is getting divorced comes immediately after the priests tried to push through the legislation that would make everybody who wants to get a divorce pay a fine. It’s as if Putin spit in the face of these nasty Russian Orthodox priests.
Remember, Russian Orthodox priests collaborated with the KGB throughout the existence of the USSR by revealing the things people confessed to. Since 1991, the priests have enriched themselves beyond what you can even begin to imagine by selling vodka and tobacco and not paying any taxes. They also sell any religious service you want to have performed. If you are a criminal who needs a priest to sprinkle Holy Water on the walls of the room where you kill your enemies, this can be arranged.
At the same time, the priests want to impose on all women of the country a uniform that will cover their bodies. They say this will be done to prevent women from provoking men into raping them. They are also pushing through legislation that limits reproductive freedoms and rewards people for procreating massively.
In short, I’m happy to see Putin stick it to these hypocrites by announcing his divorce.
Clarissa's Blog 
I really felt for him. In the video I saw he looked very sad. When asked about their separation he looked to his wife, as if to see if it was ok to tell.
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They haven’t had any relationship and barely saw each other for years. Even during official ceremonies she was never there. So this is a relationship that ended a long time ago and everybody knew it.
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Still, admitting it in public clearly had some effect on the man. It is good that they are no longer keeping up appearances. It is demeaning to everybody when public figures pretend to be happily married for the sake of persuading the public they are the right sort of people to vote for.
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Exactly! It also says a lot about the kind of public that can’t deal with the absolutely normal and mundane reality of divorce.
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Clarissa:
I did not realize that you are a Vladimir Putin supporter! If you meet with him do be careful about drinking his tea!
In my opinion the man is utterly disgusting and I would even prefer the Orthodox priests
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No, of course, I don’t like Putin. 🙂 But in this case he finally did something positive. Even if his only goal is to enjoy his harem with an even greater ease than he has been doing.
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Why are you so sure it will stop the priests?
I see how the priests can push fine-for-divorce law, but a uniform? In Russia? It isn’t Iran or Saudi Arabia yet. In general, I find it wonderful how religious so-called leaders, here priests, are so happy to force people by state power. Shouldn’t they be capable of changing minds by words (not threatening or coercive ones) ?
RE dogs, some people share your feelings:
In June 2010 Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirzi labelled dog companionship as “a blind imitation” of Western culture, warning that such behaviour would lead to family corruption and damage societal values.
“Many people in the West love their dogs more than their wives and children,” the ayatollah was quoted in the media as saying.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4389538,00.html
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“Why are you so sure it will stop the priests?”
– No, of course it won’t. But the servile bureaucrats and Duma deputees will see Putin’s actions as a command to stop rolling over and following the priests’ every order. For now, Putin has demonstrated neutrality towards the Church while Medvedev has been showily and obnoxiously religious. And that was a very bad sign.
This is a country where officials are extremely subservient and whatever the tsar does is read for the tiniest hints of what message he sends.
“I see how the priests can push fine-for-divorce law, but a uniform? In Russia?”
– Of course, it’s not going to happen. But this suggestion by the Church gave rise to endless and extremely offensive public discussions of how women provoke men into raping them. This already creates an intolerable environment in the country where even the most conservative estimates show that 50% of women have been victims of rape. The real figure is probably 100%.
“In general, I find it wonderful how religious so-called leaders, here priests, are so happy to force people by state power. Shouldn’t they be capable of changing minds by words (not threatening or coercive ones) ?”
– In the case of Christians, shouldn’t they also remember about Jesus’s insistence on the separation of church and state? It’s like every organized form of Christianity has the express goal of perverting every single word that Jesus ever said.
“In June 2010 Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirzi labelled dog companionship as “a blind imitation” of Western culture, warning that such behaviour would lead to family corruption and damage societal values.
“Many people in the West love their dogs more than their wives and children,” the ayatollah was quoted in the media as saying.”
– I love this ayatollah already. And he is absolutely right. This obsessive adoration of animals works as a substitute for people who are too inept to form relationships with creatures who are capable of talking back. Love of pets is a very easy way of convincing yourself you are loved without investing any effort into building an actual relationship.
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Look at the beginning of the horrible article:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/06/texas-jury-says-its-cool-to-murder-prostitutes-for-not-having-sex-with-you/
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Yes, I’ve seen this.
What can I say? Texas. Who can figure out how people there think?
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They think in a very simple fashion. As AM wrote:
Basically, you’re seeing the same problem that you see with “stand your ground” laws and other such laws that give people broad rights to shoot outside of immediate self-defense. It turns shooting cases into situations where the jury just basically rules in favor of the person who has higher social status. “White man” outranks “Hispanic prostitute”, and so shooting her is rendered legal, as long as you can cough up the thinnest of justifications. But if you’re a black woman who doesn’t even hurt someone while firing a gun in actual self-defense, too bad for you! These laws are custom made to be exploited for racist and sexist ends.
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This explanation seems to suggest that all juries are 100% white male. That is hardly possible, even in Texas.
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White women can be sexist and racist, while black women can be sexist in their rulings in the jury.
Very easy to find 12 people thinking a prostitute’s life isn’t worth much, as this ruling shows.
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“White women can be sexist and racist, while black women can be sexist in their rulings in the jury.”
– Women are sexist against women? This is one of the favorite premises of all anti-feminist movements. 🙂 They love to believe that women all hate each other because we are all in competition for the best resource ever.
“Very easy to find 12 people thinking a prostitute’s life isn’t worth much, as this ruling shows.”
– Now this is an explanation that makes much more sense than sexism and racism. We are seeing people who are bothered by prostitution to the extent where they lose all reason and all humanity. And they are bothered by it irrespective of their gender. There is a very different issue at play here. I don’t like easy, superficial explanations.
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// They love to believe that women all hate each other because we are all in competition for the best resource ever.
I didn’t mean that, but rather what you have said before: both genders uphold patriarchal codes and punish whoever breaks them to preserve the order. In this order, prostitutes are the lowest of the low. That’s where
“We are seeing people who are bothered by prostitution to the extent where they lose all reason and all humanity. And they are bothered by it irrespective of their gender.”
comes in.
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This makes a lot of sense.
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“Basically, you’re seeing the same problem that you see with “stand your ground” laws and other such laws that give people broad rights to shoot outside of immediate self-defense”
My understanding of stand-your-ground laws is that they don’t allow a person to get off scot free for shooting/otherwise harming someone outside of immediate self-defense, but that they remove the need to prove that the person tried to run away or couldn’t run away before using violence. In the Trayvon Martin case, for example, the shooter was not covered by stand-your-ground laws (since he initiated the confrontation, self-defence wouldn’t apply, and, if, in absurdum, self-defence would apply, he would’t need stand-your-ground since he was allegedly on the ground at the moment of shooting, therefore unable to run away), even though the media exhibited its usual professionalism by getting in a tizzy over stand-your-ground. The black woman firing a gun in self-defense case that I’ve seen mentioned in connection with stand-your ground (abusive husband or ex-husband, I don’t remember well, attacked her, she managed to escape and get her gun and when the husband tried to approach her again, she fired a warning shot) is a perfect example of who the stand-your-ground laws should protect. I don’t see how these laws are any more custom-made to be exploited than the rest of self-defence laws.
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This ruling was screwed up in many ways. For one thing, she apparently advertised herself as an escort (and escorts legally cannot make promises to have sex with anyone… they can simply collect money for ‘escorting’ you, no matter what your personal expectations may be). So basically, no one committed theft. A guy who thought he would be obtaining an illegal service (prostitution) didn’t read the fine print and handed over 150 dollars of his money. When he found out he wouldn’t be getting sex or his money back, he used his gun in anger. I don’t even see how the law of ‘recovering property during a nighttime theft’ would work in such a case. At most, it would be ‘breach of contract’ but then he’d have to argue in a civil court that he was trying to obtain something which can’t be part of a legal contract.
And he also claimed he didn’t intend to kill her, even though he shot her in the neck. Which means that either he has good aim but thinks that shooting someone in the neck won’t be lethal… or he has poor aim and recklessly fired his gun into the night, with the likelihood that the bullet could have gone into another house or killed a driver.
But now he’s free. I suspect the prosecution messed this up badly, and he also lucked out by getting a sympathetic jury, but who knows.
“This explanation seems to suggest that all juries are 100% white male. That is hardly possible, even in Texas.”
The jury doesn’t have to be all white male. If the victim is a ‘fallen woman’ (an escort, in this case, and Hispanic I think) there will be much less sympathy for her in general.
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There will be no sympathy for anybody of any gender whom the jury perceives as pursuing sexual gratification. Remeber this case of the preacher’s wife who shot her husband in the back with a rifle while he was asleep in bed? She was acquitted because she claimed (without an ounce of proof) that he insisted she wear “stripper shoes” and wanted to have anal sex.
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“Didn’t intend to kill her” is absolutely absurd. The first rule of gun safety (in an American formulation btw) is that you don’t point your gun at anyone/anything you don’t intend to kill/destroy. Nobody is good enough of a shot to shoot to disable rather than kill.
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“There will be no sympathy for anybody of any gender whom the jury perceives as pursuing sexual gratification.”
But in this case they acquitted a guy who was quite blatantly pursuing sexual gratification. Though I guess, when placed next to an escort, he was more sympathetic in comparison?
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Exactly. She did this regularly and for a living, so the jury was blinded by that to the extent of being rendered incapable of thinking straight. No person in their right mind can see this as theft. This is so ridiculous that some sort of a severe disturbance can be glimpsed behind the decision.
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“Remember how stupid the Clintons looked because they forgot to get divorced on time?”
Huh? Clinton always struck me as the kind who would cheat on his wife but never dream of divorcing her (and would be stunned if she ever initiated a divorce). I think she would regard a divorce as a personal failute and would never allow that.
I don’t know what kind of relationship they had then or now but it seems to mostly work for them.
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Let’s be honest here: she needed to stay married to have a political career. And we all needed to be put through that tawdry show because neither of the Clintons was ready to abandon this convenient fiction of a good marriage.
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“she needed to stay married to have a political career”
more or less what I said
“And we all needed to be put through that tawdry show because neither of the Clintons was ready to abandon this convenient fiction of a good marriage.”
Actually we needed to be put through that tawdry show because the republicans needed something to show for the massive resources and time they sunk into investigating the Clintons’ business dealings.
And just because the republicans were major jerks and need to remind eveyrbody to hate them from time to time. I would have been just as happy to have never known any of it.
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I agree that Republicans are idiots, this is not in question. The issue here is that there is a politician who acts in a dignified way and gets divorced. And then there are politicians who don’t and everybody gets treated to a spectacle of their private dramas.
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“This obsessive adoration of animals works as a substitute for people who are too inept to form relationships with creatures who are capable of talking back. ”
Yes, there are people who are like that.
There are also many who are not. Under the right circumstances the company of (and responsibility for) an animal is a pleasure of its own quite unrelated to relationships with people. But I’ve mostly lived around non-drippy animal people.
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I was only talking about the obsessively adoring folks. The really scary kind. The normal ones are not noticeable because they just live their lives normally and don’t make a nuisance of their pets for others.
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The best thing I have seen written about it. Sorry, it is in Russian.
http://ludmilapsyholog.livejournal.com/197299.html
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