Pussy Riot confirmed what the Kremlin wants Russians to think of its critics.

Last week’s “Duly Noted” dealt with a protest. The action against Putin came from a punk band, self-branded –and not thusly libeled- as “Pussy Riot”. Your columnist reported how the three women of the gang entered in Moscow the “Christ the Savior” cathedral to put on a show they called a protest. 

By Duly Noted’s judgment, that protest, sold, as a “Punk Prayer” had been an exercise in lewdness. That tastelessness, was rated by the perpetrators as “art”. The term seems to be an excuse for anything. Whatever the real purpose the performance, the women bared everything –except much of a political purpose. Accordingly, the problem did not come from asking the “Virgin Mary” –an insufficiently emancipated Godess- to intercede “further up” to remove Putin. CXlaiming that no support for “Putinism” is intended, the commentary targeted the band. In “The Punk Test of Liberty’s Limits”, a point was made. The piece argued that the previously ignored group gave legitimacy of what Putin does with his presidential power. The focus of the posting had been the improper form of Pussy Riot’s (hereafter “PR”) self-serving action. 

Year by year, the current nine countries of Eastern and Central Europe that were controlled by the Soviets -- Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia -- become relatively more prosperous in comparison to the richer nations of Western Europe. As a result of the European debt crisis, this trend is likely to accelerate.

It has been more than two decades since these countries acquired their freedom. All have become multiparty, largely free-market democracies. What seems normal now was far from a foregone conclusion at the time of the dissolution of the old Soviet Union. In fact, most bets would have wagered that not all these nations would have made it. 

I was one of the economists who advised the reformers in Hungary and Estonia -- then later Russia and Ukraine -- and served as co-chairman of the transition team in Bulgaria. To say that at the time we were not all confident that the democratic and economic reforms would be successful would be an understatement.

Not every vulgarity is art, and not every publicly performed perversion is political protest.

Can one handle fish and not smell? Is it possible to spread honey without becoming sticky? Could “Pussy Riot” be discussed and not stoop to their level of lewdness? Such thoughts arise as one sets out to discuss a story behind the news that was. 

Here the essentials, in case you missed the matter. “Pussy Riot” (PR) is a once ignored Russian female punk-rock band. It has a record of public sex acts, ranging from simple copulation to the vaginal insertion of a chicken in a supermarket. To “express itself” through an act of “art”, in Moscow PR invaded the cathedral of “Christ the Savior” to stage a political “action”. The analogy is to invade the Vatican. A show was put on. It asked the Virgin Mary – she herself has been told to switch to feminism- to remove Putin. The label: “a punk prayer”. The mischief scored in the internet. After less than a minute, the exhibition that revealed all including the panties of the artists was stopped. Arrests and then a trial followed. The verdict of two years, out of a possible seven, has shocked the foreign media. Count on copycat imitators emerging.

A global input into a national decision.

Seldom is the topic of this column taken from a long list of planned topics that wait being unthawed. This time the unplanned stimulus comes from a video interview of foreign-born residents in New York. The question put to them was their view of Obama. How would they vote in November?

Inquiries reflecting the views of “the man in the street” often induce shudders that travel down the spine of your columnists. (The pronouncements of some politicians are not entirely exempt.) Sidewalk interviews from America confirm the worse prejudices about the country. Asking the passers-by is a popular art form practiced stateside. When done in Europe, the results reflecting unawareness and irrationality are equally discouraging. US-made ignorance’s boldness has much to do with the courage by which imbecility and lack of knowledge are fearlessly exhibited for all to see.  The support comes from a popular culture and from a school system programmed to produce not education but good feeling that ends in failure. Unawareness facilitates the unabashed voicing of unfounded judgments. The justification of these proclamations is “my view is as good as yours, because we are all created equal”. Frequently, the upshot is sad hilarity. 

William McPherson

In this third and final part of my essay, I want to see if we can get a handle on what Macpherson meant by "institutional" racism, and to see what consequences might follow for the British police, so stigmatized. 

We left matters asking how the members of the Macpherson group could detect racism even when there was no overt evidence for it. The answer is that they could find racism because they put it there. This is called projection. 

Now, projection is a term that is familiar enough, but often our understanding goes no deeper than the term itself, as if it were a phenomenon that takes place in a mental black box. But to make it useful for our purpose, a bit more of an explication will be useful.

About resentful migrants and their hosts.

There are countries with a tradition of taking in immigrants. Among them are the USA, Canada, and Australia. Newly, there are countries that are forced to accept masses of entrants that have not received immigrants until recently. The former group attracted newcomers drawn to them by the “opportunity” offered as welcoming present. That meant that entrants could seek personal betterment on the terms of their receiver’s successful system. 

In Part One of this essay, I discussed the role of police hesitancy in contributing to the spread of the British riots. The issue there was where aggression was turned; whether outward, in the form of physical destruction,  or inward, in the form of guilt. That the rioters turned their aggression outward was essentially definitional. What was odd was that it was the police, who should have been in the business of suppressing the destruction through force, were unable to do so because their aggression had been turned inward. Britain was being burned down and they were the ones who were feeling guilt. 

Inflation is a subtle way to make you pay for the corrupting gifts you had accepted.

Regrettably, this column often needs to deal with the trends of the economy. Politics, especially the “getting elected” aspect of it, is being economized. As a result, and increasingly, the governors’ economic policy responds to the dictate of political concerns. The intertwining of the two areas that are meant to be separated is not accidental. Collectivists converted the framework within which societies produce their livelihood to a political matter, that is, into a something that is steered by those that hold power. This capture of economics by politics causes havoc. The consequences of the political steering of what would otherwise be a natural process, is characterized by derailments. The record confirms the ultimate failure of collectivistic approaches. This new order, within which society is organized as an association for satisfying its member’s needs through production, wobbles.

A few days after the riots in Britain last summer, I happened to be at an academic conference. The British were well represented and I asked a few of them for their thoughts. They were appalled, of course, but they could certainly understand the motivations of the rioters, it seemed.  The cuts that had been announced by the government bore a large part of the responsibility. These people were so deprived, and the cuts would take away whatever they had. So the riots were the government's fault, you see. And then there was the atrocious behavior of the rich, what with MPs diddling their expense accounts and all. So it was their fault, or perhaps the inequality in society that had given them the money to diddle with. Or it was the fault of capitalism, which had caused them to feel they needed things that they could not ever hope to buy, and so they had to do what they had to do in order to get them. Their method was regrettable, but they were not to blame; they had been forced into it.

How you are cast discreetly in the role of the sucker.

Remarkable things are imposed on you and you might not even notice. It begins with the currently frequent helping intervention of politics in economic matters. There are three questions regarding the disbursed, supposedly stimulating, gifts of politics; Are you getting your due, are you receiving what someone else has created, or are you paying a lot for the little you get. The growing burdens of the existing system are real while the long-term consequences promise devastation. For the tort, you will not even be able to attain official victim status. That position is already occupied. The game we play is to take it from someone to benefit so-and-so. Especially if you think otherwise, you are in this game the one from whom it is taken to give the loot to someone else.