I think the saddest thing is -- I now give more credence to Putin than America. It makes me want to cry, which I do sometimes.
From your comment I get a feeling that you have a cognitive dissonance: Either consciously or unconsciously you still set an equality sign between Soviet Union and today's Russia. Credence is something that has to be earned, and Soviet Union was on quite many occasions didn't give grounds to credence. Russia, on the other hand, after having freed itself from the Soviet Union, where it had little to say, and of Yeltsin's sell-out, has been busy building bridges both economical and cultural on the international arena, expecting to be equals with other nations, while being open in what it does and what it expects. In a way politically today's Russia is picking up after where it was forced to leave off before WWI in 1914...
