Flutterby™! : Government reflecting

Garry Kasparov writes about Vladimir Putin's thugs, Pussy Riot, and the political mood in Russia. (Via JWZ).

Governments reflect the national mood, and though Russia has come a long way in its roots it is very clearly still troubled by the same attitudes and culture that haunted it while it was a part of the USSR, and probably while it was Tsarist before that.

Just a little something to lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling about when you realize that 54% of Americans saying the TSA is doing a "good or excellent" job (LA Times article, Forbes.com article), that there are legitimate Senate candidates (let alone State representatives) who believe that women can't conceive during rape (and vice-presidential candidates who seem to believe that rapists should have say over whether a woman can abort their child), and too many other examples to mention of places where utterly bizarre beliefs are filtering up into government policy.