Insight into American culture — trading Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner

© 2022 Peter Free

 

10 December 2022

 

 

Laugh, cry or be indifferent?

 

From the AP:

 

 

American basketball star Brittney Griner headed home Thursday night, freed from Russian prison in exchange for the U.S. releasing notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in the culmination of an eight-month saga of high diplomacy and dashed hopes.

 

But the U.S. failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan, jailed in Russia for nearly four years.

 

Griner, who also played pro basketball in Russia, was arrested at an airport there after Russian authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil.

 

© 2022 Zeke Miller, Griner freed: WNBA star swapped for Russian, heads home, AP (09 December 2022)

 

 

Whelan is a former US Marine — practicably meaning that he was willing to die in defense of his country — who was arrested in Russia on espionage charges.

 

Whelan's earlier demotion in Marine rank, while on active duty, for alleged larceny — and his reportedly four passports — hypothetically made him delicious recruitment meat for the Great American Spy Complex.

 

And so and such, Whelan's story appears to have been.

 

In noticeable contrast, Griner is someone who has never been in potentially life-losing service of her nation — and who knowingly — and in self-entitled, laws-defying, other-culture disrespecting fashion — tried to smuggle an illegal drug out of Russia.

 

 

So y'all see . . .

 

. . . we 'Muhrikans value a mini-drug-smuggling, black lesbian, foreign society disrespecting, pro basketball player more than a white male ex-Marine, who is — presumably and inferably — still a nation-serving spy.

 

 

This tells us something about American values

 

As well as about our ability to do effective diplomacy.

 

Do y'all think that Griner would have made it back to the US — had she been a white, non-lesbian, non-pro athlete?

 

Probably not.

 

Who (after all) would want a white mini-drug smuggling, non-entity to return to the Democratic Party-controlled United States — after having been caught (red-handed) doing illegal 'stuff' abroad.

 

We reserve that privilege for ostensibly real Americans. Whoever those special critters turn out to be.

 

 

The moral? — Say hello to History's toilet bowl

 

We're in it.

 

Happily diversely celebrating our self-adulating — always warmongering — consciously discriminatory, national ineffectualness.