“Russians are lucky - they don’t live in an incipient totalitarian culture where you can’t say certain things for fear of offending and being attacked by a vicious minority.....”
Great Comment!
President of our class, out of high school by almost sixty years now, occasionally distributes emails sent in by members who still stay in touch. One such is a guy who ended up in Tbilisi a few years ago and every now and then submits a little essay on what and how he’s doing, what the conditions are like, and how much he enjoys the place. I always wondered how he came to be there and thought it was simply an extension of the kind of flakiness he showed way back in school - lately though I’ve started to think he just might be on to something - not only do they often seem to be culturally advanced toward a more civilized plane than we are right now (he says he has a pick of orchestra concerts and ballet presentations most any night of the week while our own Philadelphia Orchestra is continually on the brink of bankruptcy - if you go for that sort of thing), but at this point it seems a tossup as to which or what combination of ISIS, China, or Russia will be doing the most harm to the US over the next decade or so.....