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We start with a couple of items about the relationship between Russia and Germany. On trips to Russia in the early 90′s Pickerhead was struck with how Germany was referred to by Russians when discussing the Second World War. When discussing the manifold German atrocities would never say “Germans” it was always ” the Nazis.” Without going into detail, suffice it to say the Germans were guilty of the most unspeakable and disgusting things. That there were any Germans left alive in areas controlled by the Russians at the end of the war, is a demonstration of Russian forbearance.
Craig Pirrong of Streetwise Professor is first.
In a sign of the impending apocalypse, Der Spiegel has run several articles that evaluate critically Germany’s all too accepting and “understanding” approach to Russia, including during the Ukraine and Crimea crises. The articles argue that there is a volatile brew of psychology (neuroses, actually), philosophy, and ideology, which when combined with the economic interests of German industry, makes Germany ambivalent at worst about Russia.
World War II of course plays a central role in this. One of the articles notes that the Germans are acutely conscious of the horrific things they did in the East, and that despite that, the Russians do not really hold that over the Germans. This impels the Germans to make amends, and makes them somewhat grateful to the Russians. In contrast American moralism about German actions during the war rankles the Germans deeply: this helps explain why the Germans revel in shrieking about American transgressions, notably Viet Nam and more lately, Snowden. If the Americans are morally tainted, Germans can feel less guilty about their past. (Similar considerations apply with force to German attitudes towards Israel.)
One point that the articles all make is the deep anti-western streak in German thought and attitudes. The similar anti-westernism in Russia, which is central to Putin’s new ideology, therefore resonates deeply in Germany and makes Germans think that Russians are kindred spirits. These attitudes are particularly pronounced in the former GDR.
More specifically, there is a strong element of anti-Anglo Saxon-ism in both German and Russian thought. …
And here’s Christian Neef, Der Spiegel’s Foreign Editor.
Since the start of the Crimea crisis, we’ve constantly heard that Germans somehow understand Russians. Indeed, hardly any other view has been repeated as often. But nothing could possibly be more misleading. The Germans don’t understand Russians: They understand less about the Russians than they do about the British, Spanish or French.
It’s true that Germany had a special relationship with the Russian Empire long ago. Germans served as czars and czarinas, once as the Russian prime minister, and they were officers, doctors and teachers in the royal court in St. Petersburg. German engineers operated ore mines in the Ural Mountains, German farmers plowed land along the Volga and Dnieper rivers. In turn, they were introduced to Russian writers. Pushkin introduced Germans to the strange but likable Russian soul. And cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg wouldn’t be what they are today without Germans. That’s the romanticized side of German-Russian relations.
Then came the wars of the past century and the devastation the Germans unleashed on the Soviet Union. Since then, the image Germans have of Russia is inaccurate.
The postwar generation grew up with a latent fear of the Russians. In the east of Germany, people saw them as an occupying force, while in the west many believed that an invasion was imminent. Then came Gorbachev. The Germans celebrated him because he gave them the gift of reunification. In one blow, the aversion of the 1960s and 1970s to everything that came out of the Kremlin seemed to be forgotten. It was a time of enthusiasm and relief, especially in the West. Gorbachev became a much-admired figure for Germans. They projected their fantasies for a new relationship between Germans and Russians on him and the new Russia. The Germans believed the Russians might somehow become just like them.
But Russia isn’t Europe, and it never will be. Russia never went through any period of enlightenment after the destruction wrought by Stalin on the country’s soul. Germans never seriously considered that fact, because it would have interfered with their image of Russia.
They should have been warned. Not only because Mikhail Gorbachev in no way represented the kind of hard-nosed leaders the Russians had become accustomed to over hundreds of years. Nor did they listen to what Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had to say about perestroika’s inventor. He said Gorbachev’s leadership style wasn’t governance, but rather “a thoughtless renunciation of power.” Gorbachev ultimately became the most unpopular Kremlin leader in recent history.
The Soviet Union’s implosion, which they blame on Gorbachev, didn’t just rob them of their homeland. It also plunged them headfirst into a kind of capitalism that was even more reckless than Manchester capitalism. In no time at all, a handful of oligarchs appropriated the country’s most precious assets and a majority of the Russian people fell into poverty. …
A couple of our favorites have posted on the issue of women’s wages. Thomas Sowell is first.
The “war on women” political slogan is in fact a war against common sense.
It is a statistical fraud when Barack Obama and other politicians say that women earn only 77 percent of what men earn — and that this is because of discrimination.
It would certainly be discrimination if women were doing the same work as men, for the same number of hours, with the same amount of training and experience, as well as other things being the same. But study after study, over the past several decades, has shown repeatedly that those things are not the same.
Constantly repeating the “77 percent” statistic does not make them the same. It simply takes advantage of many people’s ignorance — something that Barack Obama has been very good at doing on many other issues. …
And then Michael Barone.
… The Democrats’ problem is that sex discrimination by employers was outlawed by the Equal Pay Act signed by John Kennedy in 1963 — 51 years ago. To make “the war on women” an issue and rally single women to the polls, the Obama Democrats have had to concoct legislation putting new burdens on small employers and ginning up business for their trial lawyer contributors, as the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Act’s extended statute of limitations did.
Such legislation attacks a problem very largely solved. The male-female pay differential for those working at similar levels has been reduced nearly, but not quite, to the vanishing point. Remaining differences result almost entirely from personal choices by women and men.
Those choices shifted sharply 40 years ago but haven’t changed much lately. The percentage of mothers seeing full-time work as an ideal, Pew Research Center reports, was 30 percent in 1997 and 32 percent in 2012.
By any realistic standard the equal pay problem is minor, certainly in comparison to the growth-stifling effects of the current tax code and the unsustainable trajectory of current entitlement programs.
But this president, unlike his two predecessors, has chosen not to address such major problems in his second term. …
Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.
Fallon: Hugh Hefner’s friends threw him a big 88th birthday party today. They had a naked woman jump out of a giant bran muffin.
Fallon: Top movie this weekend was ‘Captain America.’ Earned $303 million worldwide. In other words, Captain America has more money than regular America
Conan: There’s a new website that helps people write elaborate works of personalized fiction. It’s called “Match.com.”