When the CIA turned writers into operatives

> Leonid Brezhnev New Year's Address (1979) [Subtitled]

https://youtu.be/E66oM2iAMwM?si=W6OeT2GxdfUt-nzI

Incentives and disincentives, as always.

The allegations were that he sometimes had rough sex during consensual relationships. That’s hardly front-page material.

While the absolute worst part of American society and culture did approach the more casual evils that Communism produced it all pales compared to the scale and pervasiveness of what Russians suffered and perpetrated. American criticisms were frustrated by some hypocrisy but they didn’t fall flat except to the willfully ignorant of what went on during Communism.

Pelmeni (пельмени) sometimes becomes pelmenis, but like with pierogi I usually see the plural form without the `s` in English (in America at least).

I think "blintzes" too, from Yiddish `blintse` by way of Slavic.

Whatever the rules, eventually whatever is easier for locals to say will be what people go with.

> The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg).

Not speaking Polish whenever I heard "pierogis" in English, I assumed all Americans meant was Russian "pirogi". So was expecting fluffy yeast leavened baked goodies, instead I got boiled vareniky/pelimini/dumplings.

Transliterations make it easy to confuse the difference between the grammatical endings of русский (singular, masculine adjective used as singular noun) and русские (plural adjective used as plural noun). The end of English "Russkie" is pronounced more like the end of "русский", while the plural "русские" would be something like RUSS-key-yay in English, ROOS-key-yay in Russian.

The general rule for making singulars plural in English is adding -s. The general rule for Russian nominative-case adjectives is adding -ые or -ие. Granted, native Russian speakers often speed through and slur unstressed grammatical endings, so the difference isn't always discernible in speech.

Anyway, public discourse will always have someone pushing an agenda. Nabisco, CIA, your local Instagram influencer. It's a race to the bottom. That's why bastions of unbiased investigative journalism is just such a precious thing.

Here’s Tuchman from “The March of Folly:”

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity. This book is concerned with the last in a specific manifestation; that is, the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved. Self-interest is whatever conduces to the welfare or advantage of the body being governed; folly is a policy that in these terms is counter-productive.

I agree, but what can we do, and how. "Democracy" seems to be the most popular answer, except democracy is what brought us this in the first place. Maybe science....is this even on their radar (which covers "everything" so they say)?

what appears to have changed judging by the number of officials mugging for cable news shows is the intelligence community apparently sees itself as the elite in a post-national technocracy, and they are happily dismantling the confining limits of their host nations. the words for most of these sentiments are officially suppressed, but everybody knows. it's why they're afraid of memes. knowing what great artists, comedians, and writers are capable of, I'm optimistic and not entirely demoralized to read that some pseudo-intellectual sellouts sold out to some sellouts and are only remembered in the new yorker for that.