Tony Majestic vs. Russia

I'd be lying if I said I said I was an expert on Russia, because outside of "Goldeneye," "Strider," and Ronald Reagan being given entirely too much credit in the fall of the Soviet Union, I don't really know much. I do still wonder how they invented the technology to turn the Russian Parliament into a giant dragon when they can't run a nuclear power plant, though.

I do know quite a bit about the United States, and that's a good thing considering I've lived here about 86% of my life. I think it would be pretty embarrassing if I'd been here that long but couldn't tell you that President John F. Kennedy was the first man on the moon during the Great Spider-Alien Invasion of 1941.

And knowing what I do about the U.S., I can say that the notion of this country manipulating the events of foreign nations doesn't even shock me. After all, the U.S. Government is good for getting foreign leaders to die in horrific accidents involving lots of bullets if they're not too America-friendly. But for Russian Prime Minister/Real President/Mob Boss Vladimir Putin to accuse the U.S. of orchestrating the conflict between Russia and Georgia is completely illogical. If they were going to orchestrate anything, I'm sure it would involve a lot more of the "light, sweet, crude oil" that Russia is sitting on.

Kills me how they make crude oil sound delicious. It sounds like they're talking about a new pie crust. Try BP's new "rich and fluffy crude oil."

Anyway, the U.S. doesn't orchestrate. We flat out kill folks or sell you weapons so you can kill folks. Either way, we're a little more direct in our clearing out the competition. If we believed in subtlety, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. It's not like our intelligence agencies didn't know where his house was. He's a dictator, so it probably looked like Thugnificent's house. We could have taken him out on his toilet and no one would have ever known, except for everyone who saw the cruise missle fly in. That's why we went in there like a bunch of cowboys, because subtlety wasn't going to send the right message. The message apparently being, "We're the swinging dicks around here, Iran."

So, with all due respect, Mr. Putin, you sound like a lunatic, and if it wasn't for the fact that we know that you're more like Tony Soprano than an actual President, you might actually have some credibility behind you. I know that our current President said you were a good dude, but I don't think that's an endorsement that holds much weight. He can't even tell someone that his favorite cake tastes good without us being critical, let alone judge another man's character. Which leads us right back to my initial statement: You sound like a lunatic.

You've always seemed to have this mob boss vibe around you anyway. All of the other neighboring countries are afraid that you might fire off on them at any given time and it's with good reason that we're setting up our missile defense system right on your border. You could be a really good guy, but being scary suits you so much more. Besides, you're Russian. For those of us who remember the 70s and 80s, that's always going to be synonymous with "the enemy."

My biggest fear when I was a kid was the Russians firing nuclear weapons at us and starting a war and I thought Yakov Smirnoff was merely an attempt to soften our perceptions of Russians so we'd lower our defenses. Well, it didn't work, comrade. And neither did your attempts to destroy Hollywood through the franchise-killing works of Dolph Lundgren. Nice try, Nikita.

But the Soviet Union eventually broke up and started getting pissy with all of its old republics for wanting to do their own thing. And that's what happened in Georgia. It said, "Hey, let's be like America." But there were some people in Georgia who said, "I dunno, dude, we might get gangs and rap music and border control problems. I think we should ride this 'Russia' thing out." And the Russians, from what I understand, were like "Hey, South Ossetia, here's some guns and passports. Tell Georgia to stop hating so you can ride out with us." Georgia went into South Ossetia to stop the separatists and Russia used that as an excuse to go into Georgia, because technically, the South Ossetians are Russian citizens (which is why they were given passports), even though South Ossetia is a part of Georgia. All of the this grief over a breakaway region about the size of Biloxi.

Now, no one made Russia get involved in Georgia's mess, except Vladimir Putin because even though he's the #2 guy, in reality, he'd kick Medvedev's ass and get Medvedev's mother to join in. I don't see how there's room for us to get involved in that. I guess we were whispering, "Yeah, Georgia, you can totally take on Russia. And you need to show that pimp hand to South Ossetia and Abhkazia." Now, how do we benefit from watching a nation the size of OUR Georgia take on essentially the rest of the United States by itself? It wasn't a slow news week or anything, because Aquaman was invading the surface world through the guise of Olympic competition.

This is why no one listens to Russia, especially when they're clearly making up stuff so punk countries like France will stop being upset with them. Not that America isn't above this sort of thing, it's that...dude, Russia's the one saying it. It'd be kind of like if Bush put his balls out in front of the world and said that it's unacceptable to invade other nations in the 21st Century. And he's way too intelligent to say something that fucking stupid.