The “get out the vote” mobile just made its second pass down our street today.
The speakers mounted on its roof blared out at deafening volume the recording of a song that mentioned something about a “strong team” and resembled a jingle for potato chips or tampons more than anything.
Russia’s leaders take the Russian people for idiots.
Minutes later, the “get out the vote” mobile made its third pass down our street today, driving in the opposite direction.
This time, the speakers on the car’s roof were not terrorizing the neighboring with the ear-splitting jingle about the “strong team.” Instead, a middle-aged man with the velvety-toned voice of a Soviet news presenter explained — again, at extremely high volume — that today was a “celebration” in which Russians were “making a choice” that would “determine the country’s future.”
The “get out the vote” mobile just made its ninth pass down our street in the last four hours. It drove slowly. The speakers on its roof were cranked up to eleven, playing a particularly unpleasant song.
I gather this is now the punishment phase for everyone on our street who hasn’t voted in the “celebration” to “re-elect” Russia’s dictator for life today.
It goes without saying that people like that deserve the worst. Even many of their own alleged friends and political allies have been emotionally abusing them online for the last several days, so strong is the Putin personality cult, especially among the Russian liberal and leftist intelligentsia.
Not that any of them would admit it. They are Putin’s real base, because they have the means to do something about his tyranny, but most have chosen to engage in more personally pleasant pursuits, some of which they have managed to pass off as “opposition” or “grassroots” politics. ||| TRR, 18 March 2018
The Russian Reader 