“We were right to beat the crap outta them…” or The fruits of the moronization of the population Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. A couple of days ago I went to visit a professor friend of mine – to talk about life, to hear his opinion about what situation the civic ecological organizations oppositional to the Kremlin are now found (watch this blog in the near future for the text of my conversation with him). I waited a long time for the streetcar: public transit in Moscow works very badly. I had to catch a privateer [Every car driving down a Russian street is a potential informal taxi with whom you negotiate a price or who can simply decide he doesn’t want to take you—Trans.]. A Ford Focus pulled up. Behind the wheel – a young guy, maybe thirty years old. Five streetcar stops – 100 rubles, take it or leave it. All right, off we go. I tell him: 80% of Russians – are against America, could this be true? Does he enter into this number? “Of course!”, the coachman answers, “We were right to beat the crap outta them”. “Out of who?”, I ask. “You know, them…”, he replies with hesitation, “…the Americans”. Balloons in a trash bin – the party’s over? (photo by Grigory Pasko)