Russia and the USA: Winter Olympics musings

     One of my best professors at the University of Illinois often cut through the endless crap of educational "research" by saying that you can understand the whole world if you remember Sesame Street.  The truth often lies in "how are these alike and how are they different".   The 2014 winter Olympics began today, amid much talk of security risks, the rise of Putin, the costs and benefits of the games, and nervous hopes for American Olympians (who seem to have few stand- outs).  A kind of nervous patriotism prevails. 
      American media pundits keep insisting that Russians really want everything "we" do,  from Putin's resignation to Russian gay rights.  If Pussy Riot was actually performing, they'd be making a fortune here.   Meanwhile, Forbes business magazine has declared that Putin is the most powerful and influential political person in the world...and that Obama ranks second!  About 48% of Americans seem almost glad to hear that.  I trust the Obama administration is trying to figure out a balanced and irrelevant response. Remarkably, I know a Russian, or used to.  She's drifted away from my creative circle, but I am pretty sure she is not planning to go back except to visit.  She seemed comfortable in America, enjoying an ever-broadening circle of new friends.

     So I started wondering, ala Seseme Street, how America and Russia are alike, and how they are different.   Here's my personal take on this Siberia-cold winter night in the mid-west of the USA:

Alike:
    Both are  former "super-power" empires, besieged by terrorism perpetrated by various kinds of "wacko-birds, crazies, and anarchists, none of whom realize that if by some miracle they actually did bring down the targeted empire, they would have no clue how to establish anything to replace them. 
    Both have a rich class and poor class, and little in between.  The gap between them, in both places, is growing larger and larger.  The rich only care about the poor if there is a new way to make money off them, get their confused children to fight wars for them, or if they are starting to think for themselves.
     Both enter into stupid and utterly un-winnable wars, nearly always led by conservatives.  In fact they have both fought a useless war in the very same place (known for centuries as the "grave yard of empires"), demonstrating that their military and political leaders did not learn from Viet Nam and still do not understand that you cannot win a war against any insurgency because you carry bigger guns, bring ten times more soldiers, and have really cool tech stuff. 
    The common people in both countries are pretty much the same.  They love their kids, try to keep from starving, suspect all males wearing funny hats who tell them what God wants (while often still believing in a god), and want to die happy.  They also hurt each other, commit crimes of passion, have affairs, and say things they regret.
    Their written languages are both really weird, hard to learn, filled with oddities, probably accounting for at least a percentage of our misunderstanding of one another!
     They both have elaborate "homeland security" operations that are above the written laws and deeply clandestine.  These are allowed to exist because nobody can dismantle them.  These security agencies have all watched and learned from the criminal underworld (you know ...loyalty or death, selflessly obey orders, protect the president/czar/poobah (and FOR SURE, your department head!) at any cost. In some corners of operation they ARE the underworld.
     In both places, governmental agencies and their national businesses sell one thing above all else: fear.  The people must be kept afraid at all costs, and most especially kept afraid of free speech, which is guaranteed with great pomp in the laws that school children are taught.  People who are NOT afraid are, of course, very hard to bully, to brainwash, and to stampede into electing charlatans.
     Both countries are vast and beautiful, and wholly at the mercy of the oil, mining, and corporate interests.  Environmental disasters are common.  Spent nuclear fuel is a ghostly spector over both lands as well.
     Both countries love the beauty and accomplishments of their Olympians, but cannot resist counting medals and waving national flags.
     Muslim jihadists hate both countries with equal and insane fury.
     Facists live comfortably in both countries.  
     Sex in both countries is still equated with the devil.
     Liberals, such as the one writing what you are perhaps reading, are quietly kept track of...

Differences:  

                   I may have to think about that another day.