It’s very hard to keep holding on to the conviction that these two are homegrown morons and not Russian plants when even in this they so faithfully follow the Russian narrative.
As I pointed out before, the glee over the earthquake deaths suffered by Turkey and Syria has been intense and prolonged in Russia. And it was also pretty instant. I started seeing collective expressions of joy immediately after the news began to come in.
It’s definitely curious how the same individuals in Congress reproduce every Russian meme with the intensity of studious parrots.
Clarissa's Blog 
But why? I don’t understand: why would people in Russia gleefully cheer the death of innocent people who died miles and miles away, people who had no evil intent as a population against Russians? There must be some cultural element that escapes me: please explain.
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“why would people in Russia gleefully cheer the death of innocent people”
Perpetual narcissistic wound?
There’s a general free floating hatred of everyone/everything not russian in a lot of state media clips translated by Julia Davis.
I did see some translated social media messages about Turkey that mentioned that Turkey hadn’t helped russia enough in its campaign to destroy Ukraine and they’re muslim and not russian and lots of russians have gone there to escape russia and a bunch of other stuff that seemed like rationalizations.
The hate is just there looking for an excuse to be expressed.
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I posted my comment before seeing Cliff’s but yes, that’s exactly it.
I have a clinical narcissist in the family, so I know how their mentality works. It sounds completely nuts to normal people but to the afflicted it all makes perfect sense.
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“sounds completely nuts to normal people”
Exhibit number one:
tldr: Solovyov suggests that russia should try to help its allies like the US does.
The idea is met with silence and incomprehension until Simonyan says that’s pointless, after all Soviet republics that lived better than parts of russia still wanted ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ for completelly incomprehensible reasons.
Then the idea is expressed that if russia can just win in Ukraine everybody will like and admire russia and want to be friends…..
Reality… seems to be a foreign concept to them…..
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For me what did it was when some years ago a person from Russia said, in a sincere, pained voice, “You live in America, so you explain this to me. Why do Americans hate us so much? Why are they so obsessed with us? Everything they do is about harming Russia. What have we ever done to them?”
I tried to explain that most Americans can’t find Russia on a map and wouldn’t care to try but my interlocutor was unconvinced. “It’s like their every breath is filled with hatred of Russia,” he kept repeating.
There’s no entry point into such a complex delusional apparatus. Reason is impotent. A person’s whole sense of self is built on the fantasy of being passionately hated by Americans.
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Russians believe they have a messianic mission that has been rejected by the world. They wanted to give the world the biggest gift in history, themselves. But the world rejected them. Such a world should suffer for its rejection of this wonderful gift. Natural disasters and man-made catastrophes (like the train derailment in Ohio, for example) are a sign that the punishment is happening.
This is the wounded narcissism I keep talking about. A narcissist thinks that everything that happens is about him. It’s incomprehensible if you aren’t afflicted with this disease of the mind because as a sane person, you know that a whole lot of things that happen in the world aren’t about you at all. But for a narcissist it all makes a perfect sense.
This is why I keep saying that the problem isn’t Putin. It’s that 140 million people armed with nukes passionately believe that the world which doesn’t accept their supremacy and complete moral superiority doesn’t have the right to exist. Putins come and go but this insanity remains. It already poisoned the entire 20th century and has only gotten stronger in the 21st.
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I am fascinated by your analysis of the Russian psyche. I would like your opinion of the BBC article “How the Ukraine war is creating family rifts in Russia”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64640183
I don’t understand at all why the son felt a need to go to war when he could have been in the arts. He sounded educated but, ” ‘He was not satisfied with their view of the world, that they are always negative about Russia; that Russians are nobody to them; that their ancestors, the whole history of Russia is full of nonsense. He understands that he’s not like that. We talked about it. What should he do?
So, Boris says, he and Vanya agreed that he should join the military.’ ”
Is Russia like the Orwell’s 1984 in that their is only one source of information and they have always been at war with East Asia?
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Yes, there’s definitely hardcore censorship and intense propaganda. And it was all going in the direction of the war for a while. Sometime in 2006-7 it became fashionable to dress babies in military uniform and decorate their strollers as tanks with the words “Let’s hit Berlin” and “let’s hit Washington” on them. It became fashionable to dress kids up in military fatigues and have them sing military marches at a multitude of kid events. The glorification of the war, the marches, the slogans of “our grandparents managed to take Berlin, so can we” proliferated. War became an obsession. At the same time, the hatred and the demonization of the West also grew.
I saw footage the other day of Russian high school students participating in a swimming competition. That sounds wholesome until you find out that they are swimming in full military gear and with Kalashnikovs on their backs. A young man grows up like this, why wouldn’t he go to war?
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