I just read an article by @dswigle Beauty in the Snow Driven World



What interesting things did I read from @dswigle? It seems to be nothing supernatural, but if I quote her words at one of the Russian agricultural forums, then I may be called a "foreign agent".

We help each other and he has a snowblower, so I am all in! The snow was killer snow, wet and heavy. We have a couple of neighbors that shouldn't be shoveling their own, especially when it is heavy, but, of course, they are the first ones out to help.Isn't that always the way?

Why is that? Because there are people there who clearly consider Americans to be enemies. They will go crazy if they find out that in the USA people help each other, that neighbors can do something together. These people, mostly the elderly, believe that this is impossible in European countries and in the United States. They say that in the USA everyone thinks only about money and wishes evil to their neighbor.



In fact, in Russia, for a long time, people do not want to do anything together. In the USSR, all such events were done forcibly. It was called "Subotnick" from the word "Saturday" and "Voskresnik" from the word "Sunday". This was often done on May 1. On this day, people could be recalled from their main workplace and sent to clean up the territory of the factory, the factory, students were sent to clean the territory of the university or just city streets.
But I have never heard that people could gather on their street in the village and together clean it from snow or dirt! Maybe this is because there have never been good roads in the villages and there has always been dirt. Even now there is no asphalt in my village.

We have a person every week who volunteers to be the collection center for the local food kitchen. We actually just collect food from our neighborhood and one person has that box every week, so you go to their house. People that may need temporary help making ends meet.

Amazing! This is very surprising. This can cause a brain explosion in "Russian patriots". Collecting food for those in need? No. But I know people, businessmen, successful farmers who help orphanages and nursing homes. But to do this, you need to overcome bureaucratic obstacles, it's just not easy to give away the products. But it's completely different to help the residents of the whole village together to help those in need of food.



I had a good friend who lived in a house not far from New York on the shore of some lake. He told me that the residents of this area solve a lot of issues together. In Russia, this is on paper, formally, and is called "local self-government" or even "general assembly". But in fact, nothing works. According to the new Constitution adopted in 2020, the concept of "local self-government" is completely eliminated. People now can't decide anything in their village on their own and build and repair something on their own. This is called the "vertical of Power", everything is decided in the Kremlin.
But I hope that all this will change after the death of the current president. It's just that he will never want to give up power. He will hold on to Power until the very end. And everyone in Russia understands this. Many citizens even welcome this. They don't want to decide anything. It is more convenient for them to carry out orders and orders.

I will try to show your post to our "patriots" anyway. I am interested in their reaction.