John Rachel

Please watch as much of the above video as you can handle. Dancing around the room is not only permitted, it is highly recommended!

Here are the lyrics to this happy bit of pop music fluff . . .

A recent article in RT  tells us about the song. “The track was recorded by 11-year-old Svetlana Chertischeva, known as Betsy, and 12-year-old Maria Yankovskaya, two rising stars of Russian music. Released in November, the track was initially popular among elementary and middle schoolers, but later gained popularity among adults, and has since been featured in a number of meme videos.” 

Okay . . . now the juicy part.

A member of the European Parliament from Germany, former school teacher turned social psychologist/politician Nela Riehl, is claiming: “’Sigma Boy’ is a viral Russian trope used on social media, which communicates patriarchal and pro-Russian worldviews, only one example of Russian infiltration of popular discourse through social media.”

It appears to me that we have to read an awful lot into these vacuous lyrics, quite typical of pop music faire, to find the cultural abominations Riehl is referring to. It seems like a bit of a stretch, for example, that ‘Skittles’ and ‘Snickers’ are Trojan horses for embedding love of Russia and deification of Putin into the minds of young music fans. And ‘get into my Bentley, get into my Beauty Box’ are seeds to destroy the West’s embrace of neoliberalism and love of democracy? Are we to regard ‘And you’ll make me yours someday’ a forecast of some sort of demon possession, the demon being Russian culture?

Riehl is so off-the-rails, I have to wonder if the brain damage is permanent or not. Is there any way to “unhinge” such a whacko?

Evidence of this pandemic of lunacy is also everywhere here in the US. Hatred of Russia and Vladimir Putin has reached epic levels. For anything resembling normalcy and productivity to return to our national conversation — and hopefully our foreign policy — we as a nation must return to our senses. Those would be the five senses which allow us to view and embrace reality.

The challenge is formidable. I do regular postings related to my War Is Making Us Poor campaign on social media. Sometimes the responses from Americans is discouraging, if not shocking. I posted my video indictment of Vlodymyr Zelensky on over 110 allegedly progressive Facebook political groups and got comments like . . .

“This is russian propaganda”

“This is utter bullshit. Fuck Russia, Fuck Putin, Slava Ukraini”

“Hey..shit poster… so what part of Russia are you from ??”

“This is one of the more disgusting posts I’ve seen recently. How would you have played the hand Putin dealt him? Ukraine invaded Russia? Get real.”

“This reads as a translation from a Putin propaganda hit piece. It’s ridiculous.”

“This needs to be taken down! ASAP”

“You’re fucking insane.”

“This site seems to have been taken over by Meta trolls”

Obviously, animus toward Russia is running very high. Here are some stats from Pew Research Center . . .

“Roughly six-in-ten Americans (61%) label Russia an enemy of the U.S.” 

“Americans overwhelmingly rate Putin negatively: 88% say they do not have confidence in the Russian president to do the right thing regarding world affairs.”

These negative sentiments are shared across party lines . . . 

“Republicans and Democrats are about equally likely to say they view Russia unfavorably (88% vs. 87%), although Democrats are more likely to have very unfavorable opinions of Russia.”

No doubt about it. The Deep State campaign to smear Putin and create fear and hatred of Russia has been extremely effective.

And I worry . . .

There’s a threshold where brainwashing becomes more of a lobotomy and is irreversible. I fear many Americans have crossed that threshold and are permanent residents of Hate-Russia-La-La-Land. There may be no effective remedy.

We might be able to mitigate the impact of such colossal ignorance. I’m just not sure we can mass produce enough of these . . .