From Russia with Love...........

[Mega]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...apse-USSR.html

Know i should not say this but the "Young Lady" in the 1st photo..........Mega-assit is ready to help darling!

The point is however if you look at the faces of the people they are hurting, but they are ready to push on. They CAN handle the situation, do you think the average FAT western scumbag could?

Mike

[doom&gloom]

Re: From Russia with Love...........

get a little class -- the middle one at the bread counter is far nicer, and probably wouldnt give you the gift that keeps on giving...

[shiny!]

Re: From Russia with Love...........

Compare the Russians' patience and dignity with the disgraceful American consumer (they don't deserve to be called "citizen") mobs on Black Friday. The Russians were facing the real threat of starvation, yet there was no grabbing or fighting while awaiting their turn in line.

The fat, well-fed Americans will trample and kill for a gadget or a game. What will happen when they get hungry?

[BadJuju]

Re: From Russia with Love...........

Compare the Russians' patience and dignity with the disgraceful American consumer (they don't deserve to be called "citizen") mobs on Black Friday. The Russians were facing the real threat of starvation, yet there was no grabbing or fighting while awaiting their turn in line.

The fat, well-fed Americans will trample and kill for a gadget or a game. What will happen when they get hungry?

How familiar are you with how the average Russian reacted during that time? There weren't camera phones or video sites to disseminate videos of every little incident of bad human behavior back then. As for the Americans, how many of those incidents occurred relative to all of the successful, perhaps hectic, Black Friday sales at other stores? I know that there was no mention of any violence or bad behavior from any of the stores locally.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: From Russia with Love...........

Compare the Russians' patience and dignity with the disgraceful American consumer (they don't deserve to be called "citizen") mobs on Black Friday. The Russians were facing the real threat of starvation, yet there was no grabbing or fighting while awaiting their turn in line.

The fat, well-fed Americans will trample and kill for a gadget or a game. What will happen when they get hungry?

The USSR was a police state so it's likely that any sort of a Wal-Mart stampede would have been corralled with machine gun fire. I suspect that without the risk of a police action the Russians might have acted almost as badly as an American on Black Friday.

This brings to mind something I read, perhaps here on iTulip, about how the East Germans knew that all the state propaganda claiming that things were no better or even worse in the west was a lie. Some East Germans managed to get hold of some television programs where a group of people were at a home and were told to help themselves to whatever they wanted from the refrigerator. When they opened the refrigerator, the camera showed that it was stocked with meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, and various other foodstuffs. Each then took a beverage, closed the refrigerator door, and went back to the living room.

It was that scene that made clear to many East Germans that things really were better in the west because the behavior of the guests was abnormal by East German standards. Had a similar scenario occurred in East Germany, the guests would have fought to take as much stuff from the refrigerator as possible! The polite behavior of the characters in the program made it obvious that having a fully-stocked refrigerator was a commonplace occurrence in the west.

Point being, in an environment of scarcity--absolute or relative--and little risk of law enforcement, humans are going to behave badly.

[shiny!]

Re: From Russia with Love...........

I get what you're saying, but how do you explain the civility of people who endured the Dustbowl and the Great Depression with far more privation and far less law enforcement than we have now?

There's a scene in "Being There" when Peter Sellers' character is accosted by a mugger. Until that day this simpleton has spent his entire sheltered life watching TV, never knowing the real world. His response to the mugger is to click his remote at him to make him go away. He doesn't understand that the mugger is real.

People are becoming desensitized to the point that the needs and the pain of others don't matter. We've been reduced from citizens to consumers. It's OK to trample strangers to death in order to get that TV on sale... because other people don't matter. There's a deep spiritual void in our society that is being filled with "consumer products", like a diet of candy and cookies instead of nourishing food.