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In other words, Russia is holding trade talks with states which until 1989 were united, with Russia, in a single nation. Socor explains that this Russian-sponsored "Eurasian Economic Union" actually threatens NATO, because it "...restores Moscow's control over this part of Europe, on NATO's and the EU's new frontier." This has to win as the most absurd, moronic assertion of all. What Socor is saying is that Russia is stirring things up on "NATO's new frontier"-which happens to be thousands of kilometres east of NATO's original frontier. It's like Genghiz Khan accusing the Europeans of building castles "on Mongolia's new frontier" 10,000 km west of Mongolia's original frontier. If the Cold War had gone the other way, would outraged Pravda editorial writers be churning out scare-pieces about how the US dared to set up its own customs shacks at the Tijuana border, and was stirring up trouble at the Warsaw Pact's "new frontier" south of Vancouver? They might. The difference is that most of them would do it cynically, because it was their job. They wouldn't actually believe the lies they were paid to write. That's what makes America so truly, scarily insane: these people genuinely believe the lies they write. And the more implausible the lie, the more they believe it. Exhibit B: Sofia Coppola  There is a chilling prediction in the Book of Revelations: "And there shall be second-generation brats, and lo, they shall mount even unto the most high, and yet their talent shall be as that of a new-hatched louse within a shepherd's beard." Even you skeptics can see that this passage predicts the rise of Sofia Coppola. Yes, it's official: Sofia is a genius. Her latest movie, Lost in Translation, is out in America, it's huge, and the New York Times Magazine just did a nine-page spread praising her greatness. No one seems to have considered the vague possibility that the film's quality is due entirely to Bill Murray, an actor who has managed to make a lot of other films look much better than they really were (Meatballs, Ghostbusters, Rushmore, etc).
You may remember Sofia from Godfather III, where she played the bimbo daughter of a powerful man. Since she actually is the bimbo daughter of a powerful man, she didn't have to do much acting. Yet she still managed to stand out as the worst actor in a film so bad it's only watchable as comedy, a Naked Gun version of the first two Godfather movies. The funniest bit in the movie is Sofia's death scene. She stares cross-eyed at the bullet hole in her chest, looks around for Al Pacino, and says, "Um...Daddy?" Then falls dead. That sums up Sofia's career: try, fail, and look to Daddy to fix things up. Over the years, Sofia's daddy has bankrolled her attempts to become a photographer, painter, actor and clothing designer. She failed every time. In fact, she's right up there with the President in terms of number of failed careers followed by family bailouts. And like the President, Sofia's finally made it by learning the key lesson of success in W Nation: let the family hire the talent and don't get your hands dirty actually doing anything. Sofia's hands-off directorial style is summed up in an often-cited-by-Hollywood-insiders response she gave to a reporter who asked about a particular scene in her film The Virgin Suicides: "Umm...I dunno, I wasn't on the set that day." EXHIBIT C: Cannon Fodder, Cannon Mudder  If you've watched US TV since GIs started getting picked off in Iraq, you've seen one of the scariest demonstrations of mass insanity in generations: the way parents of American soldiers killed in that Hellhole look solemnly at the camera and say how proud they are of the fact that their child died "for his country" in a pointless, corrupt invasion that's gone absolutely awry.
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