I Doubt that the United States Could Have Produced the Meaning-Filled Artistry of the Russian Federation’s 2014 Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony at Sochi — which May Say Something about Comparative National Soul — and Cautions Us against Hypocritical Screeching about Purported Evil

© 2014 Peter Free

 

24 February 2014

 

 

Three points

 

The Russian Federation’s 2014 Sochi winter Olympics were spectacular from start to closing.

 

But that did not prevent hypocritical Americans from criticizing the host nation for a variety of ills, arguably so egregious that we could never see themselves stooping to such anti-humanitarian lows.

 

Politics aside, Sochi’s closing ceremony demonstrated that the Russian Federation has a strong claim to soulful culture, something that American consumerism and thoughtless lip-flapping arguably do not.

 

 

Before we start superciliously bad-mouthing the Russian Federation

 

Perhaps it would be wise to recognize that this is one indomitable agglomeration of people — as France (1812) and Germany (1941-1945) historically discovered, during their ill-advised invasions of the Russian homeland.

 

 

What set me off — typical American hypocrisy

 

NBC Olympics anchor, Bob Costas — representative of American government and public opinion — took a few minutes to remind American Sochi Olympics viewers that Russia is a viciously totalitarian state:

 

 

Costas said the Sochi Olympics had gone off better than many people feared going in, "all of which is truly wonderful, but should not serve to obscure a harsher or more lasting truth.

 

“This is still a government which imprisons dissidents, is hostile to gay rights, sponsors and supports a vicious regime in Syria — and that's just a partial list."

 

While the games' may burnish Putin's reputation in some eyes, "no amount of Olympic glory can mask these realities," he said.

 

© 2014 David Bauder, Olympic Viewing: Bob Costas and Olympic politics, Associated Press via MSNBC (22 February 2014) (paragraph split)

 

I do not dispute Mr. Costas’ comments or the venue he chose to make them in.  His reminder about totalitarian inhumanity was immensely appropriate, insofar as it went.  What he conveniently left out regarding our own transgressions is what bothered me.

 

 

This characteristically self-righteous American prattle intentionally (or stupidly) missed a few points about the United States’ own tendencies in the totalitarian direction

 

The United States:

 

imprisons many more people than Russia does

 

disproportionately incarcerates people based on their skin color

 

still discriminates against lesbians, gays, bi- and transsexuals

 

and

 

exterminates tens of thousands more people abroad than the Russian Federation does

 

 

First — the Russian Federation does not incarcerate as many people per capita as the United States does

 

Respectively, 475 versus 716 per 100,000 people.

 

See:

Roy Walmsley, World Prison Population List – Tenth Edition, International Centre for Prison Studies (21 November 2013)

 

 

Second — with only 5 percent of the planet’s population, the US holds a whopping, racially slanted, 25 percent of the globe’s inmates

 

The United States disproportionately imprisons people on the basis of race:

 

 

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population

 

African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites

 

Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population

 

According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%

 

© 2014 NAACP, Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, NAACP.org (2014)

 

 

Third — the United States, while bad-mouthing Russian bias against some people’s sexuality, continues to demonstrate its own similarly indefensible biases

 

See here, for example.

 

 

Fourth — the Russian Federation has not been perennially traipsing around the world, actively killing tens of thousands of locals in Iraq and Afghanistan (for example), so as to fulfill the avaricious aspirations of its Military Industrial Complex

 

Nor does the Russian Federation capriciously and remorselessly engage in a large-scale drone murder policy outside its borders.

 

 

Last — Sochi’s closing ceremony exquisitely reminded the world that Russia has national soul

 

I doubt that the United States could have produced anything so artistically, historically and emotionally rich.

 

It is not an accident that the Bolshoi and some of the world’s historically respected and honored writers come from Russia.  Average Russians evidently feel a connection to these cultural institutions that American artists would figuratively kill for.

 

Our hypocritically slanted disrespect fails to credit the Russian Federation with the admirably rich complexity and human strength that it represents.

 

 

The moral? — It is appropriate to castigate immoral and inhumane actions around the world, but —

 

We Americans might be more internationally respected and geopolitically successful, if we removed the logs from our own eyes, before so vociferously and one-sidedly complaining about those in others’.

 

A violent hypocrite is a poor motivator for decency.