You know that quote struck me as profoundly vicious and I wanted to see when he said it, so I looked it up. It turns out he didn’t, quite. First, it was not that protesters should have their liver spread over the pavement, it was that protesters who hurt the riot police should have their liver spread over the pavement. Second, it’s not a public statement: a person claims he did, and he says he said words to the effect to that person while having a screaming match with them. His quote (amateur translation from Russian incoming) is something like “Imagine two men in a corridor. One says to the other ‘You are an idiot,’ the other replies (in kind?) and the first rushes over to Twitter to tattle. That’s not adult behavior.”
Am I defending Peskov? Nah. Fuck him. He’s an embezzling asshat (so is the person reporting on him, Ponomarev, actually). The statement is unconscionable[1] even in the heat of vicious argument. But I note with interest how thoroughly this statement mutated from the original, which was vicious, to this extra-vicious version. Funny how that works.
I’ve also lived under rule that’s a damn sight more autocratic than Putin’s so let me add my rule: Don’t believe propaganda. Anyone’s. Sooner or later you’ll come to regret it.
[1] But, then again, people who are staring down the grim, grim prospect of a Trump presidency can surely empathize with the odd violent thought in the grip of affect.
Your translation is close enough: The Tweet goes something like this in substance: “I asked Peskov whether he thought he should have said that OMON* was too lenient. His answer: any OMON cop hurt by the protestors should have smeared their livers on the asphalt.”
Peskov apparently took Ponomarev’s initial question in the hallway after the press conference as implying that he was a fool for making the more (relatively speaking) innocuous statement to the press, and responded to him by doubling down and talking like a medieval tough guy.
Then, after the Tweet, Peskov doesn’t deny that he said it, just whinges that Ponomarev immediately posted a private exchange on Twitter and implies that Ponomarev incited him by questioning his judgment (these types tend to be thin-skinned).
All of which is to say, the vicious “liver” quote didn’t mutate that much and Gessen is correct about this being the Putin regime’s true face.
[* the Interior Ministry Police – Putin’s super scary riot cops]
Well, considering Putin’s regime really doesn’t smear livers around[1], I’d say it is the true face insofar as it involves people who’ll say “screw you” by suggesting medieval levels of police brutality. As if you had a US politician who suggested that, say, Michel Brown should have been not just shot, but should have had his head blown off when provoked by, say, someone from BLM.
Which, y’know, you kinda do. Indeed, you may have just elected one to the highest office in the land.
I often get accused of defending Putin, but honestly, I’m not a a fan of his. I just don’t think he’s Satan, is all. I suspect he gets used as a hate sink a lot and while the odd two minutes’ hate might feel nice, I suspect it is ultimately damaging and certainly unproductive.
[1] Or we wouldn’t be discussing a lightly doctored quote, but actual livers smeared on actual asphalt.
Not in public. Who knows what still goes on in the basements at the Lubyanka, where old Putin got his start? His pets on Moscow’s city council are not trying to restore Dzerzhinsky’s statue to its old spot outside FSB HQ for artistic reasons.
I don’t think you’re defending Putin, and I don’t think he’s Satan. He’s the very successful and powerful right-wing authoritarian leader of the Russian kleptocracy. To call him anything else would perhaps be insulting to him and would certainly be a dishonest characterisation.
Both he and his orange fanboi are bullying thugs at the base of things. The difference between the two countries is that we haven’t had a White House press secretary suggesting that a city or state’s riot police should be less lenient with protestors since the Nixon administration. But that’s about to change.
Rather than pick this apart and expose the faults within it’s easier to just remind you that “following the rules” is the only way to survive any nation. We lived for 8 years with a President who thought creating the rules as he went was acceptable. That picking and choosing what rules to prosecute would be acceptable.Thus we ended up where we are Moving forward if you follow the law you will be fine, if you don’t like the law, then change it. If you don’t change it and seek to nullify it by riots then you are an anarchist and will be put in jail.
I’m just gonna leave this here:
And what is one supposed to do when one’s existence has been outlawed?
Oh, wait, you’re someone that says that you are perfectly happy to punish the innocent along with the guilty, so I doubt that such a circumstance will bother you.
#Starve_the_Trolls
I love this interpretation of the White House meeting…
http://mumblytron.tumblr.com/post/153084457787/rottenbrainstuff-wildcard47-thrillers
Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics.That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this.
And I’ll be very surprised if he has it in him to go to one of his advisers and say “ok, what do I do about this?”
That was great; thank you for sharing it.
Tumblr is an odd beast… The person who originated that typically posts nothing but pretty flower pics and various other lovely photos.
I hate the term “woke” and how some people try to seem ‘hip’ by using it, but this shit did shock a whole lot of people who were not previously conscious.
Oddly enough thats an impression I too had when I saw the photos of Trump in Washington. He doesn´t look like somebody who just won the election. He looks miserable! He must have realized what a huge burden, what a huge responsibility that job is he just signed in for, what he just has done to himself. He won´t get out of this as a winner, and he knows it. And he hates it!
You brought this onto yourself, you big orange twit!
But that there is book larnin’, and we can’t have sissy elitism like that around here!
This was another post I came across that echoes that sentiment:
I do take some small, cold, bitter satisfaction in one thing, and that’s the fact that Trump is going to be absolutely fucking miserable for the next four years.He’s an entertainer and an attention whore, not a public servant. He wants to be on TV and in front of crowds, not actually working a difficult, grueling, stressful job he can’t opt out of. He’s going to have to sit through SO many meetings, be forced to read SO many briefings, get shoehorned into serious business all day every day, without crowds to perform for, and he’s going to hate Every. Single. Minute.
And then, when he doesn’t deliver on his promises, when he doesn’t build the wall or create jobs or make people rich, when it becomes clear how incompetent and buffoonish he is, the country and all his supporters will turn on him. They’re gonna start blaming him for everything, and those crowds that cheered for him are going to start booing. He’ll be humiliated at every turn, and leave office with the lowest approval rating ever, and he’ll be universally despised.
Because if he’d lost to Hillary, he would have played the martyr forever, called everything rigged, and had a cushy gig on Fox News complaining every day about how he would have done it better. But now he’s going to have to actually WORK, he’s going to be forced to deal with RESPONSIBILITIES, while surrounded by people who hate him and don’t respect him, people vastly more intelligent and competent than him, and he will be exposed as a loser. And then, we’ll fire him. He’ll go down as the worst president in history. And he’ll have no one to blame but himself.
I know this isn’t much against the fear of what’s going to happen, but friends, hear me. We are going to make Donald Trump’s life a living nightmare, and I for one take immense pleasure from that.
Via:liveblogging my descent into madness
That deos give me indeed some grimm satisfaction.
