Peter Pomerantsev's book on the surreal heart of new Russia from a few years ago provides some echoes to the America of social media and Donald Trump. My reflection is that it just goes to show those human tendencies to bully, assert power and make money are there in every society. But when the highest political office in the land is held by someone for whom 'nothing is true and everything is possible', and when the other branches of government do not assert their independence, we are in danger of cracks to the foundations of our democracy.
These comments about the Russia of this early century could easily be describing America today.
"If you start saying one thing is another, then, well, then the whole thing will come tumbling down,...It's like the West reflected in a crooked mirror" (p.43) said Benedict, a western consultant.
"Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime" (p.67) commenting on the work of the Kremlin's political technologists
"Over the last twenty years we've lived through a communism we never believed in, democracy and defaults and mafia state and oligarchy, and we've realized they are illusions, everything is PR" (p73), the favorite phrase of the new Russia.
"If the West once undermined and helped to ultimately defeat the USSR by uniting free market economics, cool culture, and democratic politics into one package (Parliaments, investment banks and abstract expressionism fused to defeat the Politburo, planned economics, and social realism), Surkov's genius has been to tear those associations apart, to marry authoritarianism and modern art, to use the language of rights and representation to validate tyranny, to recut and paste democratic capitalism until it means the reverse of the original purpose" (p.75)
It reminds me of what has been noted from early in this administration. The FT ran 100 days in the court of King Donald: "If George W Bush was the folksy-yet-formal CEO-style president, and Obama was the professorial commander-in-chief, Trump is the king of a reality TV show. His White House is brimming with tales about which players are in or out of favour and who currently has the ear of the princelings"
"Trump is extremely conscious of the media and how the West Wing plays within it. His team programmes his schedule to include high-profile round-table meetings with CEOs and others to maximise media coverage, just as he did successfully during the campaign."
"And her diplomacy has not been limited to cupcakes. Ahead of her father’s first meeting with the Japanese prime minister, she posted a video of her daughter singing a wildly popular Japanese song called “Pen Pineapple Apple Pen” on Instagram. "
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