Topic: Could someone provide evidence that the majority of Russians aren't insane? - page 7. (Read 10589 times)

Hi got a black belt in Judo and is a Gran Master in Sambo, can't argue against that.

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Random acts of kindness - Russian dashcams - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBllzlO5KGA

Here's some indirect proof they're fairly normal according to civilized standards.

There was enough random acts of kindness in Russia to make a compilation on Utube.



They are also a pancake loving people, although they eatem strangely, i must support it. I come from a pancake loving people.

The majority of Russians are not insane, they are simply stupid and easily brainwashed.
Being so isn't specific to Russians, the majority of all nations are stupid, but some are really dumb,
and those that lived for a long time under dicktatorships (pun intended) are hopeless.

The few individuals that are smart enough to see beyond the official propaganda won't matter, because
they'll be afraid to speak their minds, and for good reason. The FSB agents like those posting in these
forums the hard-to-believe Russian propaganda would 'take care' of them.

The question should be 'Is Putin insane?' and of course he's not, but he has an agenda, to rebuild the
Soviet empire, and he won't care about thousands of deaths in this process. As long as the death toll
in the ranks of the Russian army stays reasonably low, he will continue the aggression into Ukraine.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have much sympathy for Ukraine, they are as bad (maybe worse?) as Russians when it
comes to minority rights, but in this case they are the victim, and Russia (Putin and his henchmen) is the villain.

Or maybe, they weren't really taught those things, just like nobody ever taught Westerners to be consumerist addicts. It's simply a mix of capitalist advertising, companies catering to primitive desires, constant manipulation, and competitive pressure to restrict basic commercial knowledge. Therefore, being a smart person rather than a dumb consumer, requires constant effort and learning to stay ahead.

Similarly, it's feasible that Russia has been conspiring for many years to make some strategic changes. So they simply make some minor adjustments to the way things are taught at school, or minor adjustments in various other areas. But don't blame the messenger. I'm giving the Russians in this forum the opportunity to blame someone else for the apparent huge rise in nationalism

Doesn't every new generation start off idealistic, before their dreams and illusions are gradually eroded by their bitter parents and grandparents, or by their information cult?

There's a kind of nice, naive honesty about not caring about ancient historic grievances. You simply accept the status quo and play by the rules, such as: "trade, don't steal", or "love thy neighbour".

In theory, it should be possible to learn raw history to understand certain things. But that education often seems to be tainted with the dark side of human nature. For example, it seems that somebody has been taught they are owed some kind of debt due to ancient battles between ancient ancestors. Rather than just the facts, the Russians have been taught things like nepotism, greed, jealousy and resentment. What I find disgusting is that people often quote >500 year old grievances to justify bloodshed today. If that's not insanity, I don't know what is...

Here's a good one:
Perhaps Russians discover compound interest and decide that they are 'owed' all of the land on the planet due to a battle that was fought in 1100AD?!

What about the inability of the Western leaders to understand history,
geopolitics and their own ideological cocoon?

They seem to think history has ended, geography no longer matters
and are genuinely offended (to put it mildly) if someone says no thanks to their brand
of liberal democracy.

They prefer to see the world in terms of heroes and villains. They envisage
themselves as kindergarten teachers who are going to remove that mean
bully Putin and then freedom will be shoved down the throats of the other
children. Just like in Middle east..

Now, is this what you call sanity?
 

Do they have any newer material summarising the situation post-Olympics, post-Crimea? The 2013 optimism seems a bit late, and it wouldn't be the first time that I've heard unofficial refugees, immigrants, being many years out of step with whatever life they escaped from.

The blog compartmentalised the different classes into creative and non-creative, but didn't really cover whatever happened to the masses, post 1995-ish. Using the very limited anecdotes available to me, it seems they already went back to being miserable since at least 2005, or around the time when Putin started getting himself perpetually re-elected. Or was that the minority creative class, while the masses were being somehow transformed into fervent nationalists?

An update is required to explain the chasm between Pagan's angle (basically, Russian mafia cronies in panic mode after Ukraine got liberated from Yanukovich's thugs), versus Saker's later posts where they're suddenly using the same "evil Kiev Junta" rhetoric that we've been seeing so much of here.

Liberalised international trade and finance could explain a large part of Putin's popularity, they now have far more gas profits to buy the welfare vote compared to 10 years ago. And a new generation of voters. Putin certainly has some skill in maintaining his popularity. But whatever happened to a wait and see approach, "allowing" the new government in Ukraine (as if they require Russia's permission) to gradually build its legitimacy? Saker complained in 2013 about Western propaganda unfairly vilifying the new-style Russia, but that's nothing compared to the current anti-Ukraine shitstorm, which gives credibility to the side claiming that Russia Mafia are in panic mode.

Start your own thread for that. America, except as its governments' policies have affected Russian mindset and Russian government policy, is off-topic and I won't allow it. (and I wouldn't argue we aren't, either)

Russia is not safe for Blacks. Says someone from a country where the Ferguson riots are ongoing now. 

Just pointing out the irony.

Seriously, why can't the Americans just mind their own business? Do they have to poke their head in every remote corner of the world? Now back to the topic. Someone please provide evidence that the majority of Americans aren't insane.

"Russians are insane" is just another of those West-coined derogatory stigmas that you simply repeat.

If you are interested in the subject of the Russian mindset and why Putin is popular, I can recommend the following blog:
http://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/
Scroll back through a few posts, you'll find some very good analysis there.
Like, for example, this:
http://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/who-is-really-vladimir-putin-this-may-surprise-you/
and this:
http://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2014/08/15/is-putin-part-of-nwo/
and this:
http://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/yukos-murder-incorporated-and-the-eu-schizophrenia/

As for the black myths and stigmas, as the "insane" one, read the transcript of this documentary, to see the historic roots:
http://stanislavs.org/black-myths-about-rus-from-ivan-the-formidable-until-our-time/

Yeltsin and to some degree Gorbachjov are seen as puppets of the US, much like Poroshenko is now in Ukraine. During Yeltsin's reign all high-ranking officials had advisors/minders from US, and no significant law got passed without a stamp of approval from Washington. Also, don't forget that Chechen war (on both sides) was also financed by a petty criminal turned oligarch Berezovskij, who, after Yeltsin's death fled to London.

Russia now is busy with restoring what was destroyed and stolen in the "wild 90-s", reinstating its national and economic security that was subjugated to "international laws" even in Russian constitution. Putin is the first leader of Russia in probably the last couple hundred years that really promotes Russia's interests, and that can't go unpunished by the competing forces.

Russians aren't insane. They just use their own methods to take things as far as they can. And there probably won't be any real consequence for them in long run.

Key is to understand that Russia isn't about overseas influence just now, but about areas near it. Unlike USA which can't do anything near it's borders.

Would you mind informing us? If you are being honest, please do take pity on us and provide what we need to make better assumptions. "Real" information on the thoughts and opinions of Russians, or even credible information on the Russian government's operations are difficult to come by. I've tried but tend not to believe any of it. However, I can reasonably verify whether or not some posters on this forum are Russian, and can thus trust what they say is at least from a Russian, though not necessarily that they're being truthful. Even when a Western outfit quotes a "Russian" in an article, I tend to doubt the person's ever step foot in Russia, while I also won't trust anything out of their fairy tale distributors. There's too much tension, still, to sift out the irrational when reading a story relating to Russia - at least for me.

For example, I did not know of Max Skibinsky before reading his anti-Russian-government (and, frankly, anti-Russian-seeming) story. For all I know, he is the fiction of the CIA, which I distrust as much as anything which comes or may come from the KGB/FSS. I don't trust he is actually Russian because all I know about the "person" is that he has a very strong opinion on something in a tense space governments go to great lengths to lie about. ... But I would believe in him being a Russian if Silbert or Horowitz would vouch for knowing him before he had his anti-Putin-regime pieces published (which I doubt they will, because to a non-paranoid person, this request is ridiculous, offensive, and for no significant outcome, I think).

Thanks for responding, everyone. I'm not replying in order and am slow.

Thanks. The Russians seem to have a similar reality of crony capitalism as we have in the West (more-or-less -- I'm obviously not qualified to speak so specifically), and a similar anti-compatriot intelligence outfit. Since Reagan, it looks like the leaders of our countries have always been two alpha personalities trying for heavy-handed imperialist policy, where in the West, we call Russians imperialist dogs, and in Russia, they call us imperialist dogs, but perhaps we both are - or our governments, at least.

Almost all of the author's anti-US-regime rhetoric seems to be able to be applied to the Putin/Yeltsin/Medvedev/Gorbachev regime, except that the author seems to suggest Yeltsin chose Putin under duress, a story which allows Putin to be distanced from his failed predecessor. Someone mentioned Machiavelli a while ago, someone people still widely misunderstand -- is Russian anti-Reagan-through-Obama rhetoric veiled (and legal!) anti-Gorbachev-through-Putin rhetoric, or is there a genuine disconnect there?

The extent of Russian Mafia pervasiveness and acceptance by non-Mafia Russians is key to some of my assumptions here, I think, given they have prominent Jewish members while previous oligarchs which exploited the Russian people are labeled as nothing but Jewish, including in that blog. What are some of the widely-held opinions on the Jews as a whole in Russia (or are they often taken as individuals?)?

Well. I speculated on a few different directions this thread could go, but this isn't a direction I even considered. Well done for always being surprising, guys.

I was -- thieves-in-law, actually - and honestly, though I'm very interested in what's actually happening in Russia as a whole, the Russian Mafia is a very fascinating topic I desperately wish there was better info on. I would be very surprised if there are not more than a handful of operatives on this forum, but that assumes they're as pervasive in Russian economy as the few sources covering them suggest (mostly with unsourced second-hand stuff and testimony from Thieves with an honor code which either did exist and no longer does, or still does but has been diluted, but which would indicate they'd lie for the sake of their fellow Thieves, probably also to media). Supposedly, assuming this "honor code" is not a complete fabrication itself, if I directly PM each Russian and directly ask if they're a Thief, I'll find one and, by my interpretation of honor code, they'd admit to it. I'd guess this would offend more people than this thread, though.

Thief-in-law system looks oddly similar to some of the industries which popped up informally toward the beginning of Bitcoin, and there do appear to be some similarities with how certain darknet operations are handled. Do Thieves generally only target Western IP and goods? Most of us over here, I think, have no idea what the Russian Mafia is, and didn't take the Medicare fraud from Armenian members seriously when it happened because a "mafia" sounds so very outdated to us -- we think of the old Italian, Irish, and Jew mafias during Prohibition which more-or-less died out before most of us were born.

Hey! Don't try and lump me together with these morons! >_<

Yeah same about everywhere and it doesn't help when black people do stuff that gets "white folks" riled up.

I think he was talking about deepnet thieves because this is a bitcoin forum.

WOW,

And to think I thought the crypto world was filled with informed individuals.
I genuinely feel sorry for some of you commenting.

This is  a VERY interesting report.  Thanks.