[gailtate]

Like many here, I grew up at the outset of the Cold War. The Russians were definitive bad guys. Chrome-dome Nikita Krushchev was almost a cartoon villain  but he was menacing nonetheless, pounding his shoe on a table at the U.N. and bear-hugging Fidel Castro at every photo-op, taunting Nixon and then Kennedy. He was a bipartisan taunter. But for all his bluster and menace, he faded from favor back at the Kremlin after the Missile Crisis. He never was never a typical "strong-man' because the Soviet system had its own checks/balances. It discouraged "strong men" from outgrowing their pants. The premiere served at the pleasure of the council of ministers, or something. The summer before the Cuba crisis I was an usher at the U.S.-USSR track meet at Stanford Stadium and began believing that Russians couldn't be all that nasty if their track team could walk arm-in-arm with our athletes around Stanford Stadium. In October I got my first lesson on the difference between the Russian people and their government. In Russia "the people" didn't mean the same thing as it did in America. Years later I worked for "Hoot" Gibson (a chain-gang guy at Stanford fooball games) at Stanford Research Institute, which he co-founded. He would tell me about his meetings with Leonid Brezhnev and driving around Moscow with Brezhnev's hand on his (Hoot's) thigh the whole time. "I didn't know how to take it off so I left it on!"  There was still a Cold War underway but it seemed like there was a genuine truce in place. No more, it seems. A strong man has emerged, decades after the demise of the old checks and balances in the Kremlin. Which brings me back to the "people" thing and the notion of "strong" men and the fact there have always been cultures that tend to favor them. At this moment the Russian culture has produced a full-fledged strong man and genuinely loves him for his feats of strength.  Which he will continue to perform until the emergence of a Soviet-vintage regime change. Which can't happen soon enough. Right now, this seems unlikely in the near future in light of Russians' infatuation with "strength".  I gotta wonder what Hoot would think about all of this.

[gailtate]

Like many here, I grew up at the outset of the Cold War. The Russians were definitive bad guys. Chrome-dome Nikita Krushchev was almost a cartoon villain  but he was menacing nonetheless, pounding his shoe on a table at the U.N. and bear-hugging Fidel Castro at every photo-op, taunting Nixon and then Kennedy. He was a bipartisan taunter. But for all his bluster and menace, he faded from favor back at the Kremlin after the Missile Crisis. He never was never a typical "strong-man' because the Soviet system had its own checks/balances. It discouraged "strong men" from outgrowing their pants. The premiere served at the pleasure of the council of ministers, or something. The summer before the Cuba crisis I was an usher at the U.S.-USSR track meet at Stanford Stadium and began believing that Russians couldn't be all that nasty if their track team could walk arm-in-arm with our athletes around Stanford Stadium. In October I got my first lesson on the difference between the Russian people and their government. In Russia "the people" didn't mean the same thing as it did in America. Years later I worked for "Hoot" Gibson (a chain-gang guy at Stanford fooball games) at Stanford Research Institute, which he co-founded. He would tell me about his meetings with Leonid Brezhnev and driving around Moscow with Brezhnev's hand on his (Hoot's) thigh the whole time. "I didn't know how to take it off so I left it on!"  There was still a Cold War underway but it seemed like there was a genuine truce in place. No more, it seems. A strong man has emerged, decades after the demise of the old checks and balances in the Kremlin. Which brings me back to the "people" thing and the notion of "strong" men and the fact there have always been cultures that tend to favor them. At this moment the Russian culture has produced a full-fledged strong man and genuinely loves him for his feats of strength.  Which he will continue to perform until the emergence of a Soviet-vintage regime change. Which can't happen soon enough. Right now, this seems unlikely in the near future in light of Russians' infatuation with "strength".  I gotta wonder what Hoot would think about all of this.