Russia Lures the 'Anti-Woke'

Monday, July 07, 2025

There is a story at MSN about Americans who have moved to Russia, seeing that medieval cesspit as more in tune with their "anti-woke," theocratic values.

My reaction to the story is a strange mixture of pity and contempt. The pity is because these people clearly have no idea what they're getting themselves into. But I feel contempt for them working themselves up into such hysteria about wokeness that they seem oblivious to (1) the many other facets of the challenge such a move would present (even if Russia were a decent country) and (2) what they plainly took for granted in America.

I'm tempted to say Take all these idiots, please! You deserve them. -- but for the fact that many of them are taking their kids along.

That part saddens me.

The below is a great example of how ridiculous this fixation on wokeness can get, not to mention the loony kind of people this "spiritual visa" is designed to attract:

Leo Hare said he became disillusioned with the U.S. after what he saw as President Donald Trump's failure to hold "traitors" accountable following the 2020 election, which he believes was stolen.

"A country that does not punish its traitors is no longer really a country," he said, painting a picture of a nation overtaken by intelligence agencies and plagued by corrupt elites.

The Hares said they felt unsafe in Texas because of unregulated migration. Chantelle said she was worried her sons wouldn't be able to "marry a real girl" and not a transgender person and deplored laws such as those establishing buffer zones around abortion clinics.

But the tipping point, and what finally drew them to Russia, Leo said, was Putin's persona.

"I ... liked his policies, how he was trying to restore pride in Russia, restore patriotism," Leo said. [bold added]
There are over 300 million people in the United States. How many transgender people are there, exactly? (And is it really her business whom her son falls in love with, anyway?)

The rest sounds over the top, but it's par for the course for someone who would get this worked up about something like this -- or fall for the other conspiracist-type, religious/authoritarian, loony blood-and-soil-type positions you see there.

It's bad enough that I'm in a hurry to post today, but I'm so flabbergasted at the moment that I'm not sure what to say about this without more time to digest it, anyway.

-- CAV

4 comments:

Snedcat said...

Yo, Gus, it does remind me of Rand's comments about how American conservatives were very different philosophically from European ones, which historically has been true, but as we see with these guys, less so now. And it reminds me of her comments about how unphilosophical American conservatives are--I suspect these guys subscribe to the statement that politics is downstream from culture, with of course philosophy nowhere in the formulation.

Jennifer Snow said...

Didn't a bunch of socialists/communists do the same thing during the height of the Soviet years? I've been seeing a few stories like this lately, such as black people moving to Africa so they won't be "colonized" any more. I think I even heard of one complete nutjob who went to North Korea. Americans as a whole are probably the people in the world least prepared to deal with a foreign culture.

They are in for a rude wake-up call.

Gus Van Horn said...

Snedcat,

Ah, yes! Culture without philosophy. American conservatives have for quite some time failed to regard philosophy as a possible alternative to religion, or even to regard either of those as ideologies.

If they happen to feel/were told it's good, it's good, and everything else is "ideology", which is bad.

They'll suffer the consequences for this mistake without ever becoming the wiser.

Jennifer,

Yes, and these were often helped along since they were good for propaganda purposes. I thought about mentioning them, but was in a hurry.

There is a short bit about that here

Gus.

Gus Van Horn said...

Forgot to add: Not only leftists, but some who were black AND leftist, which is what I remembered.