Russia is a “conservative paradise,” says “The Daily Show.” Yet, Jason Jones’ segment “Live From Sochi-ish” this week showcased numerous stereotypes liberals have about conservatives and Russia itself — ones that showcase liberal ignorance of economics and bigotry against the rise of Russia’s Orthodox Church in Russian society.
For one thing, the satirical jokes hearken back to the way Russia was in 1985 at the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union still existed. The Soviet Union of that era still was officially atheistic, and communism was still in full force. But the writers seemed to have forgotten about the profound changes that followed the collapse of the Soviet system. Russia is not the Soviet Union, and Vladimir Putin is not Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev.
“Back in the old days conservatives would yell at liberal commies, ‘Go back to Russia!” Jones says in his Daily Show piece. “It seems that the red scare has become the ultimate red state.”
Jones sneeringly states that conservatives are looking to Russia as an answer to the “liberal policies of the last six years” under Obama. A small problem: He sets up a straw man that low taxes and low regulation have given it the “highest wealth inequality in the world.”
Russia’s economy is Solyndra on steroids. It is built around what conservatives call “crony capitalism.” Chess legend and perennial thorn in Putin’s side Gary Kasparov charges that the Russian economy has shifted from communist to fascist. Under the fascist corporatist system, and unlike under state socialism, the means of production remain in private hands but are used for the benefit and largesse of the ruling elite.
“The state apparatus has been subverted to serve a corporate apparatus that operates above the law and behind the scenes. The Putin regime has steadily channeled funds into state-controlled corporations that serve the ruling clique,” Kasparov wrote in a Sept. 21, 2007 article. “It is a super-oligarchy that has largely superseded the state.”
Kasparov quips that “criminologists” are needed to understand the Putin regime, rather than the “Kremlinologists” who read the tea leaves of U.S.-Soviet relations based on which communist party members appeared on Lenin’s tomb on May Day. Bribery and corruption are the name of the game in Russia. One estimate found that corrupt businesses and officials sucked as much as $300 billion from the Russian economy in 2010.
Moreover, the Heritage Foundation ranks Russia number 140 worldwide in terms of its economic freedom.
“Overall, notable improvements in trade freedom and monetary freedom have been largely offset by substantial declines in investment freedom, financial freedom, business freedom, and property rights, and Russia’s economy remains ‘mostly unfree,’” The Heritage Foundation’s “2014 Index of Economic Freedom” states.
The free enterprise system that conservatives prize, on the other hand, gives people with an idea an opportunity to move up the economic ladder — for their own benefit, not the state’s.
And yet liberals and socialists, including Jon Stewart, sneered at conservatives for being critical of the Obama administration for cutting out sweetheart deals with politically well-connected corporations such as Solyndra. Additionally, “The Daily Show” has been silent on the political dealings between companies such as General Electric, Boeing and Google, and the Obama administration.
“Though corruption in our political system is not near as intense as in the Russian government, American bureaucracy is a rising trend, particularly among politicians who aspire to tangible wealth and elite political status. The Bush Republicans, who started the trend, and the Obama Democrats, who are taking the trend to a whole new level, are slowly nudging us into this direction,” economics writer Brian Koenig wrote in a January 2011 Real Clear Markets article.
The reason for “The Daily Show’s” straw man — which suggests that conservatives want the same sort of economic system that exists in Russia while ignoring the sort of “Putinomics” being undertaken by the Obama administration — boils down to anti-Christian bigotry.
This was evident as Jones mocked a devout, Russian Orthodox businessman for having a chapel of his own, complete with icons; for his religious practices; and for expecting his employees to uphold Orthodox Christian standards of morality.
“That’s insane. That’s insane,” Jones said. “Dude, seriously that’s insane.”
The piece concludes telling conservatives if they don’t like things such as gay marriage that they should go to Russia.
The irony here is that Americans once scoffed at the Russians for their atheism, and now people like Jones are scoffing at Russians for their newfound religiosity and recovery of a Christian identity — forgetting that millions of Russian Orthodox Christians went to the gulags for refusing to renounce their faith.
