Lex and Fiona
The participants of a popular podcast appear to fart out bricks during a conversation that lasts three hours and nineteen minutes. I listened to it this morning, partly out of a misty nostalgia for the salad days of perestroika, when I still had a sense of humour, but mainly to get a sense about Lex and better understand how a famous Russia expert thinks.
Without saying anything new, Fiona and Lex — both first-generation American citizens — outline in as much detail as possible a worldview and practical guidelines that form Putin’s behavioral model. From their positions, at least, the dialog is entertaining, but not a great tool for studying the genesis and anatomy of the fascistic genocidal campaign I’m in the middle of.
It would have amusing been if they would have/could have had their discussion in Russian, instead of attempting to just demonstrate their ability to speak the language by blurting out a couple of sentences at the start.
Fiona’s urging sympathetic empathy for Vova reminded me of the shadow effect. The Russophilic view that only the ability to perceive the world from Putin’s logical and perceptual points of departure — not “bounded rationality” — should no longer be regnant.
A fun fact. It turns out Fiona attended Thorez in 1987, the year after me. I wonder if she also had to shower with North Korean students in the dorm on Petroverigskiy Pereulok. Perhaps. Maybe not.
We crossed paths briefly when she was director of strategic planning at Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. What a disaster that was. Maybe she explains why in her book. Perhaps. I doubt it.
Lex has chatted up lots controversial people, such as Noam Chomsky, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Oliver Stone, with, er, outrageous views about Russia and Ukraine. In those interviews, he reminds me of a doctor trying to help patients whose violent dreams begin to merge with reality and evolve to mirror disasters they become experts about. Like Ben Shapiro.