Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?

Watching the organs of American state media discover that foreign oligarchs and autocrats have constituencies is like watching a baby discover its own hands, but not cute.

As strange as it may sound to outsiders, the people who run Russia are obsessed with approval ratings.

Democracy, such as it is, really does seem to consider itself not only unique but endlessly novel; not merely a different breed, nor simply another species, nor a separate genus, nor the same family, order, class, or phylum, but wholly its own distinct kingdom. A fungus amongst the animals and vegetables.  I recently heard an almost identical story on NPR, though in that case it was the Chinese Government which was shockingly concerned with what its subjects thought and desired, or at least with what certain portions of its citizenry thought and desired.

One of the complaints about the anarchist analysis is that its obsession with The State obliterates all distinction; it treats apples like oranges and objects like women, man.  There is actually some validity to this; the mechanisms through which states exert control over their peoples and polities do differ, sometimes dramatically, but in almost every instance the distinctions are the disparate symptoms of the same underlying disorder.  Even in the simple palace economies of the earliest eras of human civilization, the sentiments of the ruled had to be considered and accounted for.  The Pharoanic godhead wasn't just a quirky religious trick; it was also a public relations strategy.  The Roman rulers of the imperial era were, but for a few genuine crazies, more concerned with the mob than even their Republican predecessors; divine right monarchs were not obsessed with appearance because they hoped to make Sunday Styles.