A serious question: how dare we wonder aloud why the Russian people have not

[Atticus]

rid themselves of Putin when we have not rid ourselves of Trump?

[CrackityJones75]

1. Ummm we elected someone else.

[RussBLib]

2. that is a critical difference

and Trump is going to get his, and not in a good way.

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. We did

but the Slobfather is still running around sowing discord, and so are his acolytes. So we haven't really rid ourselves of him, sadly.

[CrackityJones75]

8. I have no love for Trump

But Putin bombed a maternity ward.

Let’s keep shit in perspective.

Also we have a legal system to work through and not just abandon.

[Irish_Dem]

16. Trump killed many Americans by convincing them Covid was fake news.

And his party continues to spread propaganda that masks and vaccines are bad.

[CrackityJones75]

25. I will agree with that.

but ultimately those people made their own decision. Having a bomb dropped on you in a hospital has nothing to do with free will at all.

[atreides1]

17. Okay

And you don't think that Trump and his cult wouldn't do the same thing...given the chance?

Let's talk about that legal system...where a group given a lifetime position can decide what is and isn't legal...and will do so based on their political ideology or religious viewpoint!

Texas passed an anti choice law where the state cannot be sued because the state isn't responsible for enforcing that law...and then the case was sent back to the state supreme court...instead of being sent to the federal judge who put it on hold!

So you see that legal system we have can be corrupted and it can be adjusted...all you have to do is get a Jebus loving judge in the right place and it all goes to s**t!

[CrackityJones75]

26. What I think they would do is irrelevant

What they have done is what is important. We elected someone other than trump. That is where there os a big difference between trump and putin.

I absolutely believe the majority of the republican party are sick scumbags.

[dalton99a]

5. +1

[Atticus]

6. Have we really "rid ourselves of Trump"? nt

[Wingus Dingus]

20. We did the main part. Gotta let hamberders finish the job.

[Scrivener7]

23. Short of murder, yes we did.

[Atticus]

27. I wish I could believe that. nt

[Caliman73]

9. True, but Trump is STILL the de facto leader of one of the 2 major parties.

He has a not insignificant chance of being re-elected in 2 years.

Also, we have 240+ years of peaceful transfer of power behind us. Russia went from absolute monarchy, to one party totalitarian rule, to like 2 years of "democracy" to Putin and his "mob state rule".

We are demanding something from the Russian people from a perch of privilege while we are simultaneously sliding off that perch.

[Wingus Dingus]

4. We did rid ourselves of Trump. He commands exactly zero military right now.

[Ocelot II]

7. Bingo.

The Russian people are inundated with even more lies, conspiracy theories and bullshit than we were, and even more thuggery and oppression. If we can't shake off TFG's influence - and he still has a lot - because too many Americans are still drinking his Kool-Aid, how can we expect the Russians to rise up right now to get rid of Putin? Some kind of revolution might happen eventually, when they figure out that Putin has wrecked the country to the point where they have nothing more to lose, but not yet.

[Samrob]

10. How double dare we!!??

How do we even dare to say we love democracy when we continue to allow the abuse and assault against it to continue to go unpunished? How dare we when we cater to the wealthiest among us who continue to block on every turn any manner of aid to the workers and the poor among us??

[ck4829]

11. That's why our authoritarians love him so much

All Russians can do is look him with glassy eyes, they may not like him, and they may even hate him. They don't agree with anything he has done. They can't name anything he has done for them. His policies haven't erased corruption or put food on their tables. He has put a whole stain on their country's image and he has most likely murdered their fellow citizens; and not in war or law enforcement gone wrong... but straight up actual murder in 1999.

And then they pull the lever to vote for him, because they see themselves as having no other choice.

That's what our authoritarians want here.

[LakeArenal]

12. Or the KKK, Proud Boys, Sycophants etc.

[Hekate]

13. Ahem

[Hortensis]

14. Same syndrome as those who don't bother to vote or vote to keep

Democrats from getting majorities, then blame Dems for what the Republicans do with the power their voters gave them.

Beyond-hypocrisy.

[Tomconroy]

15. We voted Trump out. The Russians keep voting Putin in.

[SoonerPride]

18. Well. Not really.

There aren’t real elections in Russia.

And that is what we will have here soon.

[Ocelot II]

19. Russian elections are as rigged as TFG thinks ours was.

There's no way Putin could lose an election; look what happens to opponents like Navalny.

[Scrivener7]

21. But we did.

[gibraltar72]

22. I also have had that thought.

The only reason we didn't have the same thing was our institutions barely held.

[moondust]

24. "Stalin was the best master."

Under Stalin’s rule, approximately 1.7 million Soviet citizens were evicted from their homes and taken to forced labor camps. About 690,000 were executed.
~
“Stalin was the best master. He won the war and built the country from ruins,” Aleksey Zorov, 44, a local businessman who is the sponsor of the new center inaugurated May 8, told NBC News.
~
Russia's New Stalin Center evokes pride, and revulsion

Less than a year ago some Russians in a provincial town opened this new monument to Stalin.

In the past couple days I saw a (presumably Russian) tank in Ukraine flying the red hammer-and-sickle flag of the USSR.

Russians have been heavily propagandized for a century. Apparently the propaganda scene there resembles that in the U.S. with its strongest grip outside urban centers in less educated, less connected provinces like the one with the above Stalin center.