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Moscow-born musician Tessa Lena‘s “The Great Reset for Dummies” is one of the best available essays on the subject. She recently compared 2021 America to the collapsed ex-USSR: “It is with great frustration that I say this—but 2021 in America is a lot less fun than the 1990s in the post-Soviet space. Both are the times of societal restructuring and unprecedented, shameless robbery of everything by everyone who can. However, back then it felt like freedom, and right now it feels like a return to the Soviet Union—but without its security and its general communal warmth.”
When Tessa asked what I wanted to talk about, I replied:
“Topics could include pretty much anything from or related to your emails, including:
“Comparing official vs. dissident media in the late USSR and 1990s post-Soviet space to today’s USA. Have you looked at Ron Unz’s American Pravda series? Highly recommended: https://www.unz.com/topic/american-pravda/feature/
“The Russian punk scene…I was involved in the US version in the 70s and 80s, which was mainly an outraged ‘let’s have some nihilistic fun’ reaction to commodification and the society of the spectacle.
“What you accurately called the ‘true existential danger coming from Big Tech Big Biotech their partners in the military and their servants in the government regardless of their political affiliation.’
“DC coup vs. countercoup as political theater.
“Trump’s role as ’emcee on the Titanic’ – shock value reality-show entertainment? My satirical take: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2021/01/10/trumperly/https://www.veteranstoday.com/2021/01/14/3rd-impeachment/
Spiritual dimensions of political battles: Maybe I’m a crazy reactionary, but I still think Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were the Great Christian Novelists and it’s all been downhill since then. I figured that out after discovering Guenon etc. in the early 90s and converting to Islam (tendance Sufi). I’m curious about to what extent your spirituality is informed by tradition, and whether there can really be much viable spirituality, except idiosyncratic, minoritarian, socially ineffectual individual variations, that aren’t rooted in some kind authentic revealed tradition.
“And anything else you want to talk about. My audience is very much attuned to your wavelength.”