.... a century ago.

Even more recently, when Sean Connery played a Russian sub captain with that ridiculous scots-russo accent.

Russia peaked with Catherine the Great, and it's been all downhill since then.

In fact, I'm tempted to argue that Russia was at it's best under the Rurikids, but of course nowadays the legacy of the Varangian Rus belongs to the Ukraine, not Russia.

Russia itself is merely the flotsam of it's Byzantine, Asian, and European betters.

That whole Lenin/Trotsky thing was pretty awesome and admirable, I'd say. Didn't really seal the deal, but it started off so well.

EvilHomer, is there anything you don't have a monumentally stupid opinion about?

Russia is one of the most racist, intolerant places on the face of the Earth.
St. Petersburg is cosmopolitan and nice, Moscow is like a citadel of drunk nazis.

Of course a brony would think Russia was better off under a horsefucker.

Catherine : Louis XVI :: Peter : Louis XIV

Tetris was the last great thing to come from there.

Hooker: The "Lenin/Trotsky thing" was monumentally stupid right from the start. How they thought a "Communist" revolution could be achieved through the machinations of a Socialist vanguard, or even why a "Communist" revolution was desirable in the first place, given that the actual course of industrial society had been demonstrated Marx's theories to be pseudo-scientific claptrap, is anyone's guess. I feel bad for Trotsky and for all those well-meaning intellectuals outside of Russia who were naively optimistic about what the consequences were going to be of centralizing power under a pack of self-righteous trustafarians, but that's about it. The only admirable thing about the Bolshevik Revolution was that it got Russia out of World War I, but of course by then it was already far too late.

SMA: Louis XIV was a pompous, arrogant, authoritarian tyrant; one of the most reprehensible figures in history, and not just because he was French. I'm no fan of Louis XVI, either, but at least the latter Louis had the good grace to get himself beheaded. The best French kings were Edward III and Henry IV - you can pick either of them to replace Louis XVI in your analogy, and Louis XIV may stay right where he's at. And what *possible* reason could you have for preferring Peter over Catherine? Is it because you feel threatened by powerful German women?!

Oh, and she was an *alleged* horse fucker. ALLEGED. There is not one scrap of evidence that she was an IRL clopper; she got dicked by lots of dudes, sure, but what's wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing at all.

EvilHomer tosses word salad like Russians toss each other when in private. Both deny it when challenged.

And yeah, that's right. I said Edward III was the best French king. AND what, son?

Plantagenet Crew woop woop

I don't see what you're getting so whiny about, Memedumpster. If anything, you should be on MY side here - as a homosexual yourself, surely you'd agree that the historical hero Russia needs right now is a sexually-liberated feminist like Catherine.

But you see, Homie, I'm a Romantic. Russia had a hero once. Handsome, brave, powerful, but they rejected him and my heart broke.

His name was Napoleon.

The rumors about Catherine fucking horses were cooked up by her enemies in the court and the duma, of which she had many. They continued long after her death as tensions between Germany increased and the history of tsarist Russia became rewritten by Bolsheviks who sought to depict them as perverted, greedy, inbred monsters.

We will probably have to wait for SolRo to get confirmation on this, but my guess: propaganda. They're trying to drum up Western support for a war against the innocent, God-fearing Russians.

Hearing about rampant homophobia is one thing. Seeing it in action is a whole other experience.

some folks may only have seen things like that one asshole who went around hazing/torturing gay people

some other people will assume that there's a tolerant, loving population that is being surrounded by propaganda from their government or the russian orthodox church

chumbucket sums it up though, this is at the point where people could probably lynch a dude for being gay and get a standing ovation

It wasn't just one dude. In Russia Neo Nazi gangs have been luring gay guys from chatrooms and Internet sites to places where they kidnap them, bring them to undisclosed locations and then beat them or kill them, and then upload the videos. There are a score of them and the authorities try to make arrests for the murders but there isn't a huge movement against it, and their media has been fairly silent on the issue.

yeah, i know it's a full-fledged issue, i was using the singular as an example of scale to point out how it's not just some extremism at work here.

nice generalization

Thanks. They earned it by having the shittiness in their country be consistent.

Bingo.

Except for the lack of free press, the far more authoritarian government and the lack of separation of church and state. It's OK though, they'll be just like us in 15 years, let them take back the Baltic states and central Europe and turn the whole region back into the stagnant shithole it was for 45 years.

I can easily imagine Russians hating and beating up blind people.

Because you're a bigot?

Do you imagine Mexicans in sombreros constantly having siestas?

SolRo, did you know the Mexico version of the Supreme Court in 2015 deemed bans on same sex marriage unconstitutional, and redefined the legal definition of marriage to encompasse same sex couples? I bet you didn't, because you see Mexico as comparable to Russia. They are not.

Do you really want to use a better country than Russia as a strawman to defend Russian bigotry?

You know who else has a way better track record on gay rights?

Israel.

Yeah, Israel also says it non-Jewish citizens have exactly the same rights as Jewish ones...and that the settlements are legal...and that arabs can live peaceful lives in Israel...that all their war crimes aren't war crimes...etc, etc, etc.

(queue similar video of radical Hasidic Jews threatening/attacking a gay looking couple type stunt.)

And it's adorable how gay marriage has only been legalized this year, and now you're acting like you have some decades old moral superiority, when in the 90s your politicians openly called being gay a mental disease.

They're still better on gay rights, the subject of yon vidyooooo.

Gay people are second class citizens in Russia, they lose most of the rights of straight people by being called criminals. Russian aggression in Ukraine is against international law. Russia's war crimes are also constantly called, by you, not war crimes.

You think because some other country, like Israel, or 'Merica, does something terrible, that means it's unfair that Russia can't do it too, therefore it's wrong to say it's wrong.

This is Teabagger logic

Right, because I never criticized America for those things and I said we always had gay marriage, since, like 1779. You literally jettisoned every critique I made... wait, are you EvilHomering me? Sonofabitch, I fell right for it.

SolRo loves to cherry-pick which groups are fair game and which are off limits. Russians: not this season.

You know what's better than Russia?
Israel.

meme, why are americans inbred, fat and stupid?

Because they choose to be, and a good deal of our industry wants them to be.

Are you suggesting that the American need to be inbred, fat, and stupid is causally linked to Russians being homophobic assholes?

If so, please describe the mechanism.

ok, since, you're too simple to understand how generalizing about a whole people might be offensive, i'll just give up and give you long and detailed explanation;

Religion and superstition.

What are you talking about, I know actual inbred fat stupid Americans. I thought you might know some too.

Well, I did ask for an EvilHomer defense, and you did deliver.

Back to Star Wars vs. Star Trek!

Why is anyone against gay people? I hate to defend SolRo here (no really I do) but most countries on Earth are less tolerant than the US when it comes to homosexuality. India passed a law against being gay. Most of Africa and definitely the Middle East are unfriendly. Latin America depending on if you're in a rural area or not.

The problems with Russia are not the same as the problem with SolRo. Russia has a chip on its shoulder because of all the corruption and an inability to raise its living standards to those in Western Europe. SolRo's problem is he feels dogpiled all the time because he was dogpiled growing up.

My advice to you, SolRo, is not to leap the defense of Russia all the time, or that of any other country. All countries have a lot of shit they pull at government levels because we're all just a bunch of territorial hairless apes with explosive things. Own the shit on American and own the shit on Russia and try to meditate or some shit.