So textfield once noted that the Russian version of the Delfi portal, which everyone here reads, reeks of tabloid journalism and the incitement of national discord, along with endless pointless cursing about the government. Basically, that's exactly how it is. Moreover, if you look into the comments, you get even more amazed and horrified – it feels like the visitors just pour all their anger and hatred out there. Any news, even the most innocent or positive one, is a reason to shit on the government or businessmen, or whoever else, and also to announce what a bad country Latvia is and how everything here was bad, is bad, and will be bad.
Basically, it's long been noticed on the internet that a person who constantly and unconstructively bashes the country they live or lived in can't bring anything good, and it's better not to interact with such people. After all, there's always the universal principle: "If you don't like it – get the fuck out of here." Works on websites, too, by the way. And badmouthing the country you left is only possible for the sake of weird self-reassurance and nursing your own complexes.
In any case, it turns into a vicious circle – Delfi incites discord and hatred, the visitors feed on it and incite it even more, in turn demanding more and more mudslinging at anyone and everyone.
While I was writing this post, an article “On the question of commenters' verbal diarrhea" appeared on Delfi right on topic. They write funnier stuff on LiveJournal, but it's not bad there either.
Eventually, it's gotten to the point where a special portal has appeared to quench the proletariat's thirst for class and national enmity – novonews.lv. I accidentally went there a couple of times by clicking on article links – every time I was amazed at how one could spout such rabid propaganda. And then robot-terminator Valerych (part-time Negr, meaning a so-called non-citizen of the Republic of Latvia) told me that he consumes content from there. In general, this is a known thing – when a person only consumes information sources that confirm their already existing points of view and interests, nothing good comes of it. The person ultimately gets locked into their own view of things, even if it strongly contradicts the facts. However, this phenomenon is well-known and even has a special name, but I don't remember it.
So, in my previous post, I promised to say what the distrust of the majority of people in the world towards the authorities means. No ground-breaking discoveries here – just the old truth that a nation gets the government it deserves. Because the people in power are a part of the nation. You want to change something – go into politics and act. Too lazy? You'll live how you've been living. Too lazy even to go vote? You'll live even worse than you've been living. And here a Delfi article arrived just in time on the same topic.
In general, if a person is perpetually dissatisfied – it's all in their head. Even if you shower them with blessings, they'll still complain if that's their mentality (the concept itself is also pretty shaky, but whatever). Besides, for some reason, many take it for granted that world goods and resources will be enough, if not for everyone, then certainly for their country, and that the world for some reason should be such that these goods just fall right on your head.
This is despite the fact that America, often cited as an example of prosperity, is actually living beyond its means, is in debt to the whole world, and doesn't even make it into the top ten countries on the happiness index. Or take the recession (I almost added "of the eurozone" out of habit). I'm no economist by any stretch, and I know almost nothing about economics. Therefore, the idea that macroeconomic indicators and labor productivity must necessarily grow every year sounds rather strange and unintuitive to me, especially if you add the aging population and the demographic crisis to the mix.
The post turned out to be aimless and amorphous, but hey, that's the topic.