The longer I live, the more people amaze me. So, on Twitter I posted a link to a Goblin “comrade’s” impressions of American healthcare.
I had actually intended to stop reading Goblin for many reasons, but somehow I couldn’t resist and paid his site a visit. I don’t feel like doing anything serious, my leg is aching a bit, so I’m reading all sorts of nonsense.
Anyway, about the post. It is one person’s personal perspective—and not a particularly sympathetic person at that, judging by how he behaves and describes everything.
Yet the “comrades” in the comments go so far as to treat this (propagandistic, it must be said) post as practically the ultimate truth.
What is very funny is that the discussion looks remarkably similar to threads of this kind on reddit.com, which is often frequented by left-leaning Americans who constantly criticize American reality, the government, and, of course, the healthcare system.
It is funny because Goblin’s site is frequented by nationalists—that is, people who are politically “right-wing” in this sense—and they constantly ridicule Russian “libtards.” Yet here they are voicing the ideas of American “social liberals,” if one may put it that way.
Goblin himself does not often speak so directly; he usually couches things in irony so that the conclusions can be turned whichever way he wishes. He certainly makes no secret of being highly politically partisan. Or of the fact that ideas which are good for Russian (or Soviet) nationalists and statists (aka patryots) are bad for American nationalists. And conversely, that the ideas of the American “left” and the intelligentsia who criticize the way the United States is organized are good for Russian statists.
I do not think I expressed what I wanted to say very well. Perhaps it is too much for a short post, which is why it is not working. I will try to elaborate.
The problem is that the posts on Goblin’s site present the world in a very one-sided way. There are wolves everywhere, everyone is out for personal gain, and there is endless sarcasm about the shallow understanding that people in the former USSR have of the West and the modern world. I generally like irony and sarcasm, but they should lead to there being more good in the world, not less. Goblin deliberately constructs his site as an anti-Western propaganda machine, but it looks rather crude. What is strange is the number of “comrades” who cheerfully agree with him without realizing that they themselves are becoming victims of the very thing they ridicule. The post about medicine described above is the best example. Why criticize the American model when healthcare in their own country is deep in the shit, and they are judging it from one shallow post? As usual, the comrades also extol the Soviet Union, viewing it through rose-tinted glasses. No one even considers that you almost certainly needed connections and had to pay bribes there to get treatment for anything beyond routine cases. Or that advanced equipment and techniques were available only to the privileged few. Nor does it occur to them that the smarter Americans are well aware of all the problems with insurance-based healthcare, which is why Obama’s new (imperfect) law was passed.
Quite a few internet personalities have made a name for themselves through trolling, sarcasm and, shall we say, expressing a vivid “hatred” of what they consider evil. Apazhe, tiphareth, and others. I dislike some of the others so much that I will not even mention them. Another question is what this hatred is directed at. While the aforementioned characters clearly wanted to improve people (and, to some extent, their lives) in general, Goblin’s outpourings usually make it look as though his only concern is restoring a “great” empire like the USSR. And specifically as a state entity—individual people do not matter, as long as the achievements of the empire as a whole are impressive. To that end, it is useful to vilify Western countries, while concealing all of one’s own problems as carefully as possible. At the same time, one can and should employ methods and practices that are denounced as horrific when used by the “enemy,” such as torture, unlawful detention, espionage and the sponsorship of dictatorial regimes.
The hardened cynic and self-proclaimed guru does not believe it is possible to live by the ideals of humanism while genuinely supporting personal freedom and well-being for everyone on Earth, regardless of their country of residence, usually justifying this by saying that he is old and that he is a boor. Worthy arguments indeed.