RSN: Masha Gessen | Why America Feels Like a Post-Soviet State

31 July 20

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Masha Gessen | Why America Feels Like a Post-Soviet State

Masha Gessen, The New Yorker

Gessen writes: "I've been plagued by a nauseating sense of recognition lately. Story after story of the pandemic response in the United States reminds me of the country that I spent most of my professional life writing about: the Soviet Union and also the Russian state that was born after its collapse but which couldn't shake many of its traits." 

One persistent Soviet trait is the ways in which Russian institutions handle information—what we might call “the culture of reporting upstairs.” The best-known example is the Soviet government’s coverup of the extent, nature, and danger of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This wasn’t only, or even primarily, a matter of suppressing uncomfortable truths. What drove officials to lie was not so much a desire to conceal the facts from ordinary people as it was a need to supply the leadership with upbeat reports. For many officials, before and after Chernobyl, the production of cheerful stories that were entirely divorced from reality was a full-time job. They lied about the number of shoes that the country’s factories had made and about the length and location of roads that its workers had built. (Once, when I was eleven or so, my parents saw a television story about a newly built road and decided to take a trip to it in our recently acquired Zhiguli car. It turned out that there was no road—only a few feet of pavement where the report had been filmed.) Little that was made or said by official Soviet institutions fit, worked as intended, or made any sense, because so much of it existed only for the purpose of reporting upstairs. (An old Soviet joke: “What doesn’t buzz and doesn’t fit in your ass? A Soviet machine for buzzing inside your ass.”)

I find myself recognizing this culture in the U.S. now, when, for example, I read a report in the Times on how the Trump Administration convinced itself, back in April, that the COVID-19 pandemic was on the wane. Or when the Administration shifted the duty of collecting coronavirus data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Department of Health and Human Services—the C.D.C. had been pliant but not, it seemed, pliant enough for Trump. Could moving data collection to a Cabinet agency explain why the curve of new cases seemed to flatten? I felt a similar sense of recognition when I read the Times’ report on the fifty-two-million-dollar temporary hospital in New York City that ended up treating a total of seventy-nine COVID-19 patients, while people died of the virus in other hospitals, sometimes for lack of access to care. The facility, set up at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, in Queens, turned some patients away because they weren’t sick enough and others because they had a fever. Because confusion reigned over whether patients could be transferred there from other hospitals, very few were. The chaos recalled the U.S.N.S. Comfort, which also was supposed to ease the burden on hospitals in New York City. At what was nearly the local peak of the pandemic, only twenty of its thousand beds were occupied. Arcane and absurd rules and procedures kept it from admitting more patients. I thought back to all the times when I would tell a story about Russia to an American friend, and how they couldn’t understand how nonsensical rules could govern and destroy people’s lives. I could never really explain it, and I always had the sense that my friends didn’t quite believe me. For example: a person who had served time in prison in the U.S.S.R. could not obtain a residence registration—a government permit to live at a particular address—if they didn’t have a job, and they couldn’t get a job without a residence registration; not working, in turn, was an offense punishable by incarceration.

The intentional institutional ineptitude and callous nihilism of contemporary Russian society is the product of a seventy-year Soviet totalitarian experiment—or so I have long believed. No such experiment took place in the United States. So how is it that the pandemic has made the U.S. resemble the post-Soviet Russian state? Part of the explanation lies with Donald Trump himself, in the ways in which he performs power. He acts like a totalitarian leader in the absence of totalitarianism—a Mafia boss without a Mafia—and to an astonishing degree he gets away with this act. He has created a culture of reporting upstairs that is reminiscent of the Central Committee of the Communist Party; as a result, Deborah Birx, once a highly respected public-health leader, is suddenly willing to obscure the impact of COVID-19 for him, and the C.D.C. downplays its own safety guidance in urging schools to reopen. Some of the enabling behavior in Trump’s entourage can be explained by the President’s ability to damage almost any Republican politician’s career with a single tweet. But it is harder to understand why people who could leave the government to work in the private sector, without having to appease a deranged boss or debase themselves daily, continue to take part in his show.

It may be obvious to an individual within a labyrinthine bureaucracy that things ought to be done differently—that a person should not be turned away from a hospital for having a fever—but individual actors have little power as cogs in the machine. In the cases of the Billie Jean King Tennis Center and the U.S.N.S. Comfort, one might have imagined Governor Andrew Cuomo or Mayor Bill de Blasio intervening to cut through red tape—each of them likes a grand gesture, and in their coronavirus responses they worked not in concert with but explicitly in opposition to the President. Still, bureaucratic absurdities dominated much of their conduct, and in the end they enforced irrational and inhumane rules.

The U.S. and Russia have vastly different cultures, incomparable histories, disparate ideological influences, and divergent economies. One similarity that unites them, however, is radical inequality. In the Soviet Union, members of the Party élite lived in a different universe than the rest of the country. They had their own neighborhoods, schools, roads, resorts, stores, and, of course, their own health-care system. This is still true. A wealthy and well-connected Russian can receive world-class medical care, while ordinary people are reduced, much like in Soviet days, to having to buy their own disposable syringes and pay cash for nursing care in the hospital. Wealthy Americans also live in a different universe, and when they get sick they land in different hospitals than middle- and lower-class Americans—which, as the coronavirus has shown, makes it much more likely that they will survive.

This radical inequality was a direct cause of the Soviet culture of reporting upstairs. The people who received and passed on the final reports of the number of shoes manufactured and roads built did not wear the shoes and did not travel the roads. It did not matter whether these stories were true, because those other people who used the shoes and roads, the ordinary Russians, might as well have never existed. This same culture permeates Trump’s Washington. Members of his Administration will not die because of a shortage of nursing care; they will not be turned away from any medical facility, and their children will not be attending any of the public schools that the Administration is forcing to reopen. They feel invincible. Trump can refuse to wear a mask, and his officials can stand by his side at his coronavirus briefings, because when they talk about the pandemic they are not talking about themselves. Neither was Cuomo, nor was de Blasio, talking about himself when he held briefings in New York. The disproportionate number of deaths among poor New Yorkers—the plain reality that many died because they had lesser medical care or no medical care—does not detract from New York’s pride in successfully flattening the curve. This fundamental sense of division—of alienation—between the people who run things and the people who die is what makes the rest of the pathetic debacle possible: the runaway bureaucracy, the adverse incentives, the lying. It’s possible because we are not in this together.

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DHS Compiled 'Intelligence Reports' on Journalists Who Published Leaked Documents
Shane Harris, The Washington Post
Harris writes: "The Department of Homeland Security has compiled 'intelligence reports' about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Oregon, in what current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors."
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Iowa Teachers Write and Send Their Own Obituaries to Governor Ahead of Fall Reopenings
Nicole Pelletiere, ABC News
Pelletiere writes: "A group of Iowa teachers have sent their own mock obituaries to their governor in hopes she'll revisit plans for reopening schools."
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Jaime Harrison and Sen. Lindsey Graham. (photo: CNN)

Lindsey Graham Campaign Ad Features Image of Opponent With Digitally Altered Darker Skin Tone
Paul LeBlanc, CNN
LeBlanc writes: "Sen. Lindsey Graham's reelection campaign posted an advertisement to Facebook earlier this month featuring a digitally altered image of his opponent - who is Black - with a darker skin tone."

The campaign ad, uploaded to Graham's Facebook on July 23, includes an image of his Senate rival Jaime Harrison that was originally published in the New York Times. The version of the image in Graham's ad, however, shows Harrison surrounded by a dark, portrait-style background effect with a notably darker skin tone. 

"Hollywood continues to bankroll my opponent, raising tens of thousands in campaign cash to attack me -- but they fail to understand this simple fact: South Carolinians won't stand for Radical Leftists telling them how to think and how to vote," the Facebook post states. "Are you with me?"

The Graham campaign told CNN an effect was used in creating the ad but pointed to past Facebook advertisements in which they said the same effect was used on Graham's face, and called the issues raised about it a "non-story."

"It's sad that detractors are making up fake accusations about this graphic -- intended to highlight Jaime Harrison's support from Kathy Griffin, a liberal actress who once posed with a fake severed head of Donald Trump," T.W. Arrighi, communications director for Graham's campaign, told CNN in a statement Tuesday.

"The artistic effect used, the same one that was used on Senator Graham just two days before in a video, is a non-story. The only people who want to shift focus from policies important to South Carolinians -- like creating jobs and bringing our medical supply chain back from China -- are liberal detractors who are trying to hide their radical positions."

The edited image of Harrison has garnered significant attention on social media and comes at a time of nationwide reckoning over race -- a topic that has quickly defined campaign races across the country, including Harrison's bid to unseat Graham. 

Harrison's campaign declined to comment on the record Tuesday, but directed CNN to JA Moore, a South Carolina state representative and Harrison campaign surrogate, who said he was "disgusted" by the ad. 

"It's the kind of dog-whistle politics that the Republican party has been practicing for a number of years now," Moore said.

"We don't recognize Lindsey Graham," Moore added. "He's not the person that was originally elected over 20 years ago to the federal office, and I think this is just another example of a bought-and-paid-for politician who is so focused on his own personal gain and less focused on the people of South Carolina."

That message was echoed by the Lexington County, South Carolina, Democratic Party, which tweeted that the state "will elect (Harrison) regardless of what kind of stunts Lindsey tries to pull."

"We don't care how dark a person's skin might be. We vote for the person, not their skin pigment. We all know Jaime and know a fake photo," the tweet said.

Harrison later said in a statement emailed to supporters Wednesday that Graham "is playing a part in a 400-year history of an Old South that had no room for people who looked like me."

"Our state is hurting right now, and we must keep our eye on the ball and fight for the people of the Palmetto State," he continued. "Lindsey Graham might have darkened my face — but it's Lindsey who the people of South Carolina can't recognize."

South Carolina is a Republican stronghold, voting for the GOP candidate in 13 of the last 14 presidential elections. Trump won South Carolina by 14 points, and carried the independent vote. In 2014, Graham beat his most recent Democratic challenger by nearly 16 points. 

Harrison is hoping to close that gap by running a pointed campaign that hits Graham for the way he's governed since President Donald Trump took office.

He announced his bid against Graham in a video message posted in May 2019, where he talked about his own background in the state and nodded to health care, student loans and Graham's long record in politics -- particularly the senator's warm embrace of Trump over time.

"Here's a guy who will say anything to stay in office," Harrison said of Graham at the time. "Lindsey Graham can't lead us in any direction because he traded his moral compass for petty political gain."

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Latest Probe Ends in No Charges for Former Ferguson Officer Who Killed Michael Brown
Alana Wise, NPR
Wise writes: "The prosecutor for St. Louis County on Thursday said his office will not bring charges against Darren Wilson, the former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in an incident that helped launch the Black Lives Matter movement, citing a lack of concrete evidence to charge Wilson criminally in Brown's 2014 death." 

"Although this case represents one of the most significant moments in St. Louis's history, the question to this office is a simple one: Could we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, he committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law? After an independent and in-depth review of the evidence, we cannot prove that he did," Wesley Bell said in a Thursday news conference, adding that his heart "breaks" for Brown's parents, who he said had asked him to revisit the case.

"I also want to be clear that our investigation does not exonerate Darren Wilson. The question of whether we can prove a case at trial is different than clearing him of any and all wrongdoing," said Bell, the county's first Black prosecutor, who won his 2018 election largely based on voters' rejection of his predecessor's handling of the Brown shooting.

The killing of 18-year-old Brown, who was Black, by Wilson, a white police officer, galvanized a growing movement against police brutality and systemic racism and birthed the rallying cry "Hands up, don't shoot."

The resulting protests defined Ferguson's summer and captured the national spotlight, drawing renewed attention to the issue of police violence in America.

Bell's predecessor as prosecutor had also decided no charges were possible. Later the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Wilson had shot Brown in self-defense.

Still, despite his and the DOJ's findings of no clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing, Bell said that Wilson could have handled the situation differently and avoided killing Brown.

"There are so many points at which Darren Wilson could have handled the situation differently. And if he had, Michael Brown might still be alive. But that is not the question before us. The only question is whether we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime occurred. The answer to that question is no," Bell said.

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How Costa Rica Slowed, Stopped, Then Reversed, Deforestation in Their Rain Forests
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Corbley writes: "In the 1970s and 80s, Costa Rica had the highest deforestation rates in Latin America - but the next few decades saw the country halt her forest loss, initiate replanting and conservation efforts, and regrow almost all of her lost tree cover."
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House Democrat Introduces Bill to Block Oil Drilling Near Polar Bear Dens
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Frazin writes: "Rep. Jared Huffman has proposed a new bill aiming to prevent oil and gas drilling near polar bear dens, targeting the Trump administration's plans to open up a wildlife refuge in Alaska for drilling."
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