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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33302 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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What does Russia have?

Salacious refrigerators, as it turns out. And the cult of progress in general, as the other cornerstone post-Soviet myth has now been repeated, as Marx postulated, as a farce. Soviet heritage aside, we've been worriedly looking for new memes since 1999:

"You see, let me just explain the situation to you, like the way it is," said Vovchik. "Our national business enters the international arena. And there's all kinds of dough out there - Chechen, American, Colombian, if you know what I'm saying. And if you just look at them as money, they're all the same. But behind all this money there is actually some kind of national idea. We used to have Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality. Then we had this communism. And now that it is all over, there is no such idea at all, except for the dough itself. But you can't just have the dough justify the dough, right? Because then it is purely incomprehensible - why are some ahead and the others behind?"

"And when our Russian dollars are circulating somewhere in the Caribbean," Vovchik went on, "you can't even really understand why they are Russian dollars. We lack national i-den-ti-ty..."

"Get it? The Chechens have it, but we don't. That's why they look at us like shit. What we need is a clear and simple Russian idea, so that we can explain to any bitch from any Harvard: rub-a-dub-dub, and don't look at us like that. And we should know where we come from, too, anyway."

"The task is simple," said Vovchik. "Write me a Russian idea, about five pages long. And a short version on one page. Make it straightforward, no smartassery. So that I could sort it out with any foreign faggot - a businessman, a singer, or anyone else. So that they wouldn't think that we here in Russia just stole the money and put up a steel door. So that they would feel such spirituality, these whores, like they did at Stalingrad in 1945, understand?"

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