America has always had a special relationship with Russia. Sure, there was that whole bloody cold war thing, and some whacked out force field we once tried to build around the entire country. But in times of national soul searching, Americans always seek guidance from the sober commentary of our Russian compatriots. Lenin. Dostoevsky. Tolstoy. This is a land of great ideas! During the surreal 1980s, when our kind-but-stern grampa figure of a president turned out to be a lobotomized John Bircher with a fetishistic disgust for “the poor,” who among us did not seek comfort in the puckish commentary of Yakov Smirnov in his short lived sitcom What A Country!? And that mouse! That mouse that just wanted to reunite with his family! We could go on...
Well, wake up America, because national conscience is back, and he’s a guest commentator at UPI! None too soon, too, because this whole Bush thing is really getting out of hand.
So this guy, Andrei Vasilyev, has a two-parter on U.S.-Venezuela relations that ran today (See part Одинь and part Два). Like Gorky before him, Vasilyev rips the veil off conventional wisdom, laying bare a reality so starkly, startlingly obvious that readers actually gasp a collective “duh.” Fer instance:
>>> Did you know that the United States always thinks it’s the boss of the entire fucking world? It’s true, and they’ve turned against Venezuela because they want the oil;Common sense and vodka shots. What’s not to love?>>> And: Venezuela is going to need a stepped up military soon for the day our brilliant leaders decide its time to liberate the crap out of their country;
>>> And: U.S. petroleum companies can stop bitching and moaning about having to cooperate and pay taxes for the billions they make off of Venezuelan oil fields because every other oil company in the world sucks it up because they are still making billions;
>>> And: You want energy independence, smart guys? How ‘bout growing yourself some freaking oil or maybe using a little bit less? How bout that?
