By Chris Benevento, News Staff
As the hype surrounding the Winter Olympics rises to a fever pitch, so too does the criticism of the location of the games this year – Russia. It seems as though American baby boomers are still stuck somewhere between Stalin and the Cold War on the country’s timeline.
As recently as Jan. 5, former Governor Mitt Romney stated that Vladimir Putin’s Russia undercuts the spirit of the Olympic Games. Romney went so far as to compare the 2014 Winter Games to Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics. While most people can recognize Romney’s bias against and general disdain of Russia, it is these kinds of comments that are so damaging to the American psyche.
They are damaging because they only build upon the already incorrect notions that Americans have regarding the Russian people. As Americans, we are taught from a young age that Russians are the bad guys. That they are power hungry wildcards with nuclear weapons. That they are historic backstabbers who are not to be trusted. The list goes on.
Politicians instill fear of communism and even though Russia’s days as a communist nation are over, many Americans still think of the country as a corrupt nation existing beneath a flawed ideology. And who can blame them? From the Cold War on, western film has been obsessed with painting Russians in a certain light. Movies like “James Bond” (pick one), “Rocky IV” and “The Hunt for Red October” all cast a negative light over Russian culture. On the other side of the world meanwhile, is America: A shining beacon of democracy and freedom for all.
While this may seem like harmless stereotyping, when it is combined with uneducated rhetoric of politicians, it begins to carry weight. One need only turn on the news to hear a politician complaining about Russia’s unwillingness to cooperate – or better yet, see things our way.
And that is the problem. That’s why anything to do with Russia scares the hell out of politicians. As a country we are able to work over most other nations with relative ease. We hold all the chips so, by transitive property, we make all the calls. And most countries realize this and step in line.
Most.
Russia tends to maintain the norms of its culture and does not just lie down when told. That is why our leaders have such a hard time dealing with them. They know better than to subscribe to the “this is America’s world” doctrine. Where another country might cave when President Barack Obama demands the return of a wanted whistleblower, Russia flatly refuses. Regardless of what you think of the Edward Snowden situation, Russia was clearly flexing its muscles there.
As much as it seems like childish behavior and deliberate uncooperativeness, it is necessary. Our government’s actions are just as bad as any villain’s in the movies. We may not be hijacking nuclear missiles, but the amount of information that is deliberately obscured from the public is despicable. We point our fingers at the Russians and mock their history, but one need only look back as far as 1953 to feel ashamed of US history. It would be interesting to know how many US history books mention Mossadegh. Americans might view foreign policy towards Iran differently if they realized that we essentially made it the way it is today.
In the end it is just another waiting game. Waiting to put these baby boomers away in nursing homes so that a new, better informed batch of citizens can step up and move forward with our fellow humans in a positive way. In the Internet age, we are not bound by what the government wants to tell us about our history – everything is at our fingertips in one way or another. When more people become aware of America’s own past activities, we as a nation will be able to better equipped to work together with our fellow inhabitants of the world.
In the meantime, people like Mitt Romney will spread their uneducated views and criticisms and seek to hurt the unification of mankind.
-Chris Benevento can be reached at [email protected]
