The Russification of American Domestic Politics
What happens when political alignment replaces the rule of law: the case of Russia.
My apartment building in Moscow, one of the famous high-rises or “vysotki” made during Stalin’s construction boom in the capital, was a one-minute walk from this maze of cars and trucks. Having entered the traffic on the right of this photo, I needed to cut across 12 lanes in less than a quarter of a mile to make it to the left-hand turn that would deliver me home. None of the drivers were in a mood to let anyone cut across simply because Moscow traffic made everyone really ornery.
Inching my way forward, the moment I noticed anyone hesitating for a second — probably checking their phone — I would lurch my car into their lane, blocking them so I could slink my way across to the far left. Car after car beeped, but everyone understood that I needed to get over, so the protests usually ended as soon as they started. One day, they, too, would need to get over to a left-hand turn somewhere. Weaving my way across the six lanes on the right, I was nearing the final lane from where I could turn.
There is something I have often written about when discussing why Putin was able to turn Russia so easily into a genociding, fascist society: 90 percent of the people are not politically aligned, and so they have no skin in the game. There is little or no reason to fight the system or endanger your well-being by protesting against things that “don’t concern me.” The war in Ukraine is considered by many as a bad thing, but not bad enough to go to jail for; not bad enough to foolishly go out and protest against which could result in a losing a job and worse being beaten by the police whose sole purpose is to protect the 10 percent of politically aligned Russians.
The effect of this indifference makes Russia a weak and morally questionable society, and unless you have ever lived in Russia, a sadly violent one where no one is protected unless they are aligned somehow politically. The police exist not to protect the citizens but the government and its corruption. Don’t get me wrong, laws do exist, and the citizens are expected to obey them, but the laws never infringe on the freedom of the politically aligned. Countless companies in Russia have been illegally fined or raided by the tax police, only to be reopened with new and protected ownership by a politician, police officer, or one of their children.
When sitting in Moscow’s lanes and lanes of crawling traffic, cars carrying anyone politically aligned regularly race through the traffic almost as if it weren’t there. In the way that people in the West clear paths for emergency vehicles, the seas are cleared for the elite in Russia. Cars with flashing lights on top, and often with no lights but VIP license plates, roar down the traffic-clogged roads at top speed, giving drivers just seconds to move or be harassed and, in some cases, beaten. It is common to see the elite racing down highways against the oncoming traffic, expecting those people to get out of the way.
As the cars moved slowly forward, the light flicked to green, and we had approximately 2 minutes to turn left. If you missed the light, the 10 — to 15-minute wait would begin again. Next to turn, I readied my car but was abruptly cut off by a Mercedes-Maybach — a car that costs around $350,000 in Moscow. As the Maybach raced forward to make the left, I cut across the double line and made my left before him while raising my hand to signal that I thought he was a ride prick — I didn’t flip him the middle finger. I am not a middle-finger kind of person.
Because he did my turn before him, he raced up behind me and tried to squeeze me back into the oncoming traffic, which was still barely moving. Looking over, I saw one guy driving who was raging at me. My car was a Volkswagen Passat — roughly $30,000-and- so he could see I was not one of the aligned. Appreciating that any additional actions by me would only increase the fine — or trouble — for myself, I fought every urge to rage back and slowed so he pulled ahead a bit and then turned my car across the stopped lanes to go down the side street to my building.
When he saw that, he pulled his car onto the sidewalk and raced down it, chasing pedestrians away until he turned down my street and floored it to catch up to me. Catching me, he pulled ahead and blocked the road so I couldn’t go further. Not knowing what to do, I got out. He climbed out and immediately saw I was a foreigner. It’s pretty evident to Russians who the foreigners are. This guy was some thuggish politically-aligned bureaucrat, most likely working in the FSB or with some major bank or gas company providing “behind-the-scenes” security — which meant he injured people for a living. Standing my ground, but also appreciating this guy could do anything he wanted to me and get away with it, we argued in Russian a bit, and he threatened extreme violence. I have to admit, his threat scared me, and so I fell silent.
“Look. You are an American. You don’t know that you get out of the way when you see a car like mine. This is our country. All of the rest of them — he meant the regular people — move, and so must you. But I like America. You are strong because you don’t have our system of serfdom, which still exists today. If you were a Russian, I would have probably hurt you badly. But I like Americans.”
At that moment, a police car pulled up. He flashed a badge or something, the policeman saluted, and the car drove away. He patted me on the shoulder and told me to have a nice evening. Getting back into his car, he went down the street the wrong way, scattering them like pigeons on a town square. He was gone. While living in Russia for 28 years, I had hundreds of such run-ins and was constantly reminded that I was not politically aligned and had to remind myself of the rules. A lot of Russians don’t even appreciate to what degree this dual system exists until they are victimized by it.
The despicable display of partisanship and even criminality taking place in our nation since January 20th is a harbinger of what Russia is today. For decades, I warned that Fox News and the right-wing propaganda would bring us to this moment. Regrettably, I was right. Now, based on what is taking place with Musk’s bullshit DOGE, and the gutting of government programs to give the super rich a $4 trillion tax cut, we are seeing the creation of a system where only the politically aligned will be safe to live in our country.
Everyone else will be subject to the whims not of the law but of the lunatic in power. “In power” means not who the president is but who the highest aligned person is atthat moment. In this system, the president is the highest power, and then the next highest is not, say, the vice president or the Speaker of the House, but the person most trusted and closest to the president. Today, in the U.S., that would be Elon Musk.
Russians don’t pretend that their Constitution protects them. They know it is only as good as the person in power’s ability to interpret what it means. Putin will never let the Constitution stop him. He will make that document bend to his will. This is what Trump tried to do in his first term and is doing now. No one in Congress will stop him; the Democrats are missing in action. The courts are trying to slow him down, but sooner or later, the conservative majority of SCOTUS is going to come together and let Trump construct the system of government that has ruined Russia.
If you think I am an alarmist, rewatch the SOTU speech. Never were so many lies spoken for so long 100 minutes — and never did so few people object to those lies. Elon Musk is carrying out a coup, and yet he was praised at the speech as if he had held up the flag at Iwo Jima.
Very soon, the privileged and politically aligned in the U.S. will be tearing down side streets and beating down the unaligned — and no local cop who wants to keep his job and pension will dare do anything but smile and wave.