Putin Values 'Values' Immigrants -- as Fodder
Monday, July 21, 2025
To be fair, sending gullible, poor, and desperate people to the front lines is a traditional Russian value. -- Garry Kasparov
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Not so long ago, I commented on the phenomenon of blood-and-soil/"values" kooks immigrating to Russia from the United States:
[T]hese people clearly have no idea what they're getting themselves into.There was nowhere in the media account I'd read about anyone being sent to the front lines of the invasion of Ukraine.
But the newcomers faced plenty of other unsurprising problems, including "legal and financial issues, grappling with frozen bank accounts, or getting lost in [Russia's] layers of bureaucracy." As low an opinion as I have of Russia, I thought even joking about some of these people being sent to Ukraine would be overkill.
Well, exactly that has happened:
An American father who moved to Russia to avoid LGBTQ+ "indoctrination" for his kids is being sent to the front line in Ukraine, despite being assured he would serve in a non-combat role.The man, Derek Huffman of Texas, has no military background and was sent to the front lines after a week of training, all in Russian, which he does not understand. On top of that, he has not been paid for his first month of service.
It is interesting to note that in both news accounts, a wife of one of the migrants posted to YouTube to complain, only to remove the video later.
Whether these deletions occurred due to political pressure or a strong desire to avoid admitting a mistake, this will make it harder for like-mided folk to avoid the same trap. Many of the targets of this immigration campaign strike me as likely to dismiss reports in regular media (like these) as "fake news" and stick with their social media bubbles.
Uh-oh.
I expect to hear about many more of these tragic stories in the future.
-- CAV
2 comments:
Hey Gus:
It's like the jokes write themselves! Leave it to clueless MAGA types to turn themselves into sacrificial lambs for holy mother Russia. I follow Kasparov on Twitter and when he tweeted that on his feed, I couldn't help but chuckle, in utter contempt. I gained a better understanding of Russia when I started studying Ayn Rand's philosophy. Even in college, teaching Russian history was very rudimentary and lacked depth. Once I took a deep dive and researched the country myself, ain't no way I would have uprooted my family to move to that medieval hellhole. Sadly this is as American as apple pie.
So many Americans were hoodwinked in believing Communism was the future, only to be sent to gulags or be trapped. One book I read over 10 years ago is called "Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union" by Robert Robinson. That book gave me nightmares. Post Communism, nothing has changed. And because Americans are not the best educated, or willing to learn on their own, they'll fall for any nonsense. And it doesn't help that Trump is constantly ass kissing Putin, who continually plays him like a fiddle. The only people I feel sorry for are the children of this man. Shame on the wife for agreeing to this foolishness.
Bookish Babe
BB,
Your comment reminded me of a quote by the Russian-born Isaac Asimov, which captures perfectly the downside of the American divide between intellectuals and most of the rest:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Ayn Rand has noted in the past that the protective aspect of the above is a rejection of many of the last couple centuries' worth of bad philosophy, at least on an explicit level.
But yes, the current climate of spitting on education is going to bite lots of people. (I believe that so far, a few hundred people have done moves like this.)
Gus
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