Putin's Eurasian Fantasy and Russia's Bizarre Love-Hate for the West

To understand the dynamics of what is happening in Russia under Vladimir Putin, a self-styled tsar in all but formal title, one needs to understand the bizarre love-hate relationship Russia and the Russian people have had towards the west and western ideas for literally a thousand years.   Much like American Christofascists who can only feel good about themselves when looking down on others, Russia and far too many Russians have long clung to a mindset that Russia and its Orthodox religion were superior to the west and western Europe in particular even when any rational objective standard would conclude the exact opposite.  Prior to Peter the Great's forced westernization of the aristocracy - e.g., mandatory shaving of beards, adoption of western style clothes and learning of western ways and languages - any visitor to Russia was typically shocked by the backwardness of Russia which liked to view itself as "the third Rome" and protector of true Christianity.  In many ways, even under the Soviets, this mindset remained unchanged and was in some ways intensified by the Soviet anti-west obsession.  A piece in Bloomberg looks at this mindset now being packaged under the term  "Eurasianism." Here are some excerpts:

Vladimir Putin’s aggressive foray into Eurasia, and the possibility of a new cold war with the West, has actually enhanced rather than lessened his popularity in Russia. The Economist despairs that “the chances of Russia’s becoming a modern, civilised country, open to the world and respectful of its citizens, are diminishing with every outburst of war hysteria on Russian television.” Last week in Germany, amid much discussion of Russia’s aims in Ukraine, an acquaintance of mine from Leipzig seemed equally pessimistic: “The Russians need another century,” she said, “before they are ready to join European civilization.”

[A] century doesn’t seem long enough. For Russia’s own journey to the West has not reached its destination since Peter the Great started it in the 18th century. 

The collapse of communism in 1989 seemed at first an opportunity to reset Russia’s direction. But any such move was pre-empted by the disasters of Boris Yeltsin’s rule and the consequent rise of Putin. Today, Russia’s political elites seem far from willing to undertake a makeover in the image of the West. Indeed, they appear to be engaged in a menacingly different geopolitical and cultural attempt at self-definition as they seek close alliances with China and other Asian countries. 

As Japan has shown, a superficial westernization, indicated by integration into the global economy, can easily conceal atavistic fantasies of national redemption and glory. Early in the 20th century, Japanese philosophers such as Kitaro Nishida and Tetsuro Watsuji sought to establish Japan’s radical spiritual and cultural difference from the West -- a project that eventually lent itself to Japan’s militarist Pan-Asianism in the 1930s and 1940s.

The advocates of a Greater Russia can claim to have an even longer intellectual and political pedigree, and a broader range of supporters: from Dostoevsky, who denounced the West almost as fervidly as the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb, to Alexander Herzen, the radical critic of Russian autocracy who claimed that Istanbul was the true capital of the Russian Empire.

An intriguing variation on this Russia-centric outlook was Eurasianism -- the notion that Russia belonged to neither East nor West but was a state with Mongol roots, its society a synthesis of various ethnic communities supervised by Great Russian Nationalism. Its ideological and intellectual basis was established by anti-communist Russian emigres in the 1920s and '30s, who, though critical of the Bolsheviks, hailed the strong Russian state that the latter’s despotism had helped create.

The Eurasians foresaw “post-Bolshevik” Russia as retaining a monolithic economy and one-party rule. They also wrote incessantly about the necessity of a religious revival across Russia. In their vision, the cunning of history was to reveal Russians as Eurasians rather than westernized communists or liberals.

Eurasianism is presently articulated by the political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, the son of a KGB officer, who reportedly has many attentive listeners in the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church. Dugin and his acolytes acknowledge that centuries after Tamerlane’s conquests, which redrew the map of the world, Eurasia remains, as U.S. policy maker Zbigniew Brzezinski put it in 1997, “the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played.” Accordingly, Dugin has advocated a new anti-Western alliance between Russia and Asian countries.

This sense of injury and humiliation helps confirm the theory of one of the more eloquent and influential Eurasianists, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, a respected linguist, who argued in his essay “Europe and Man” that the very project of Europeanization was an ideological trick, designed to achieve permanent Western dominance over the non-West. . . . . the feelings of wounded pride, anger, frustration and inferiority he articulated remain crucial to understanding the ostensibly blithe anti-westernism in Russia today.

Putin himself rose to high office on a wave of support from the Russian masses, which had been exposed to some terrible suffering caused by Russia’s westernization through economic “shock therapy.” Bending Crimea to his will, or calling for a religious revival, Putin seems to be realizing the old Eurasian fantasy of a strong ideological state dedicated to restoring Russia’s distinctive national and civilizational “otherness.” 

Few commentators were more shocked on Sept. 11 than those who assumed that history had ended in 1989, and the universal dissemination of Western-style capitalism and democracy was the main geopolitical reality. They now confront the eruption of a long-repressed ideology -- an expansionist Neo-Eurasianism, which, incarnated by a nuclear-armed country, makes even Islamic fundamentalism seem toothless.

 Without understanding Russia's very different - and all too often tragic - history that has been beset by autocrats and rulers who have manipulated the Russian populace against its best interests, it is hard to understand what is happening currently in Russia and its goal in the Crimea.

Is Josh Weed Actually a Reparative Therapist Like "Marcia" Bachmann?

Having been in the closet for 37 years before coming out and struggled to be "straight" during a more than two decade long marriage, I know full well that one's sexuality doesn't change no matter how much you lie to yourself and others whom you love.  Thus, I refrained from writing about Josh Weed a Mormon who admits he's gay but claims he's happily married to a woman.  Someone is lying and I suspect it's Weed and his wife who are lying to themselves and to each other because of the religious brainwashing that both of them suffered growing up.  And none of this is intended to say that Weed doesn't love his wife.  All those years in the closet, I DID love my wife.  I just could not be what she really wanted or deserved.  And despite Weed's unspoken claim that "one can have it all" if one decides to follow his path, the truth is that you cannot.  No matter how "robust" he claims his sex life is with his wife,  the cynic in me cannot help but wonder what/who he's really thinking about when he's having sex.  I suspect that he's lying to himself out of religious based guilt.  And his wife's lying to herself that she's not being cheated somehow.  Some like Andrew Sullivan gushed that one should be free to live their life however they want be it gay or straight.  That's true so long as you do not then take the next step and try to force others to follow your route or the route that others are pushing upon them.

Having reviewed the website for Life STAR Washington where Josh Weed is employed as a therapist, it looks like Weed has lied about other things.  This clinic and its treatment of "pornography addiction and unwanted sexually compulsive behaviors" looks strikingly like Marcus Bachmann's "Christian counseling" clinic that pushes reparative therapy.  And note the shame language.  Yes, that form of therapy that the APA condemns and which the State of California may make illegal for those under the age of 18 years.  What's really frightening is that Life Star Washington is gearing up to launch a full blown youth division.  One can only wonder how many LGBT youth will be damaged by such a program.

Oh, and did I mention, the costs for this "12 step" witch doctor like therapy?  It's quite lucrative for the therapists: to take the full blown treatment program over a course of a year or two equates to thousands of dollars per patient - or should I say victim.   Here's the discretely worded language of how Life STAR Washington describes itself:

LifeSTAR Washington is a three-phase treatment program aimed at helping individuals who struggle with pornography addiction and unwanted sexually compulsive behaviors. The phases of treatment build on one another providing a long-term and comprehensive approach to eliminating addictive/compulsive sexual behaviors.

LifeSTAR Washington provides participants with a combination of group therapy, education, tools, and resources to help overcome unwanted sexually compulsive behaviors. Partners receive strong support and guidance as to how they can best manage their life as they live with someone struggling with sexual addiction.

While homosexuality is never explicitly mentioned, the coded language would seem to have it as one f its targeted "compulsive behaviors."  Wee may claim that he takes a "live and let live" approach to sexual orientation, but his clinic seems to tell a different story and seems to be peddling the same old "ex-gay" snake oil.

Cindy McCain Speaks Out Against DADT

UPDATED: Things must have gotten REALLY hot in the McCain household. Now Cindy McCain claims she still supports DADT notwithstanding her unequivocal statements in the video in this post. Perhaps she needs to remind her husband that while he's the Senator, she's the one with the serious money, not him. Invoke the "golden rule" if you will.

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Conversations must be interesting around the McCain household what with Meghan McCain supporting gay marriage and now Cindy McCain joining in a NoH8 Campaign's Anti-Bullying PSA and in the process slamming DADT. Sadly, unlike these strong women in his family, John McSenile continues to kiss the bigoted asses of the homophobes and Christianist even though most detest him. As Towleroad reports (and as can be seen below) Cindy McCain specifically mentions DADT in her portion of the PSA. Would that there were more conservatives that would face the fact that religious tradition has no place in the civil laws in a nation that claims to guarantee freedom of religion for all of its citizens. These highlights from Towleroad:
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The NoH8 campaign has just put out an anti-bullying PSA highlighting a range of topics contributing to the way gay and lesbian youth are perceived by their peers, including religion-based bigotry, the disciminatory ban on blood donation by gay men, marriage inequality, and bans on gay adoption.
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Notable is Cindy McCain speaking out about gays not being able to serve openly in the military considering her husband is perhaps the biggest impediment in the U.S. Senate to getting the ban lifted. McCain has threatened a filibuster if DADT is attached to the Defense authorization bill, and was recently reported to be trying to make a deal to strip the DADT provision from the bill.
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Kudos to Cindy McCain. Here's the video (McCain first appears at about the 0.52 minute mark):

Blaming the Victims - Mental Health Issues in the LGBT Community

One of the favorite things the homo-haters like to do in their efforts to denigrate LGBT individuals is to cite the higher level of mental health issues that many gays are plagued with. Never mind that the number one cause of these issues stems not from being gay itself but rather from the living hell that all too many of us have experienced due to the discrimination and bigotry that we face daily. This malevolent reality arises from the anti-gay jihad of "godly Christians," the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, etc., and a host of professional Christian organizations whose principle stock in trade is the dissemination lies and untruths about gay individuals. Add to this constant barrage the fear of being disowned by family, the danger of being fired at will in the majority of the states in this country, and the lack of recognition and support for our relationships. All of which again is due to the efforts of the self-congratulatory religious folks in this country and the parasites who make a living stirring up anti-gay hate.

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The wonder is, in fact, that gays aren't even more messed up emotionally and psychologically than we are given the relentless attacks we face constantly. Personally, it took me years of therapy and two suicide attempts before I finally put this kind of poison behind me. Sadly, given the USA's still badly broken health care system, many LGBT individuals lack the medical insurance coverage that would allow them to seek professional help. While what I have just described applies to the USA, the phenomenon of increased mental health issues is not unique to America. In the UK, the award-winning gay lifestyle magazine, Attitude, is seeking to address the issue head on as reported by The Guardian. Here are some highlights:
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"It's a big taboo, we're expecting it to cause quite a stir," admits the editor of Britain's award-winning gay lifestyle magazine, Attitude. . . . The theme is the worryingly high rates of mental health and dependency problems among gay men.
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Evidence shows that gay men are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide. A research project at London's University College hospital found "significantly higher" rates of mental illness among gay men than their straight peers. "It's an incredibly sensitive issue that gay men are very defensive about," said Todd, "because we fought so long to say we're equal, we're happy with who we are. While that's true, we're are also suffering from the trauma of the journey, the isolation, the secrecy and the shame, and the resulting effect on your mental health that is more likely to happen to you if you grow up gay than if you grow up straight.
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"It's about low self-esteem and the self-hating gay man. But the time has come to find the strength to face it and realise that, while it's not our fault this has been inflicted on us, we do need to deal with it." For Todd, realising he was gay at the age of 10 sent him "freefalling into shame". "It was the beginning of the worst five years of my life. I feel for me then and for kids now totally let down by society. I should have been able to talk to my teacher, to my parents. I don't think many people really understand the trauma."
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The isolation begins in childhood. "They pick up on the fact that the parents are sensing there's something different too, and that's bad. The child is absorbing all this. Another level of shame. It's a painful thing for people to deal with. Not everyone comes out of the closet shouting hurray!"
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[A]s one gay blogger wrote: "The gay community is truly a wounded lot. In essence, young gay men have no role models in the home, no one to guide them through feelings of insecurity. They know deep down that they are different, but as young people tend to do, they don't view 'difference' in a positive, healthy light. They come to believe that they are inherently flawed, unlovable, second-class citizens."
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Things may be changing, but the damage inflicted by homophobia and growing up "different" has already been done for many gay men. "Homosexuality" was not taken off the list of psychiatric disorders until 1973, making it especially difficult for older gay men to reveal their sexuality to mental health providers, said Dominic Davies, director and founder of Pink Therapy, the UK's largest independent counselling organisation working with gender and sexual minority clients: "If you don't feel you can trust your doctor, you are not going to disclose to them.
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The result of living as a stigmatised minority is that you self-medicate." Tim Franks of the gay and lesbian charity Pace said mental health providers in Britain are blind to the problem. "Of the young people coming into our workshops, around one in four has already attempted suicide. They are isolated and in hiding almost, they don't know who the safe people are.
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Todd hopes Attitude will help gay men to tackle that question: "If there is a gay community, we need to look after people who are having a bad time. For the first time, we have concrete answers. If you have these issues, there's a way to deal with them."

Spousal Abuse Around the World

I cannot help but wonder how much of these shocking statistics derive from patriarchal religious belief systems that subjugate women to men. It is very sad. Very sad, indeed.