Want some interesting discussion and views from expats? Www.expatua/forum A recent post about foreigners, politicians and diplomacy: Well, look, some these guys are only politicians (or journalists) who live in America or the UK or Oz, and if they are lucky at an Embassy someplace. Now I am for once not calling them liars, but rather more out of touch with foreigners. Which makes them woefully undereducated. We actually live here, shop here, walk the streets daily (NO not street walkers!), we are married to locals, interact with Ukrainians and Russians every single day. We hear and speak the languages, see the television, listen to the radio, grow, cook and eat the national dishes every day. Ride the trains, the busses, make polite conversation with the people on the street, argue with our friends about politics, have large family gatherings, stare at short skirts, laugh at crappy drivers, attend the local churches, walk in the parks, take photos, and some of us actually own businesses and/or work here off the local economy, we have dealt with local police and more importantly have dealt with the everyday bullshit that is the governmental infrastructure that is the local operating government. (TPR, PR, building permits, registering to live ....) We are not insulated by iron gates and marines guarding our doors under the guise of diplomatic papers, working at a desk on a plot of land that belongs to our own government based on treaties. We dont just fly here to talk to eggheads like ourselves who deign to make policy around a world that we do not understand except by briefings given to us. We dont stump for votes thousands of miles from the scene and fly out to make for photo opportunities at revolutions that we visit for a few hours. We arent in some out of the way office commenting on what is happening based on news reports, we are here. WE are here, everyday. For years +. And as hard as it is, we understand the common population of the country we live in better than any Ambassador or other diplomat who is only here for the short term and only deal with people who actually think they are smarter than us or know better. They arent, no matter how learned someone calls them, and they dont because they cant. It is one thing to say well those Russians, think differently and only experience it on a rare occasion such as the few times they have to deal with those people, we on the other hand have first hand experience all day, everyday. I dunno about most politicians, but I was studying Soviet Foreign Policy long before many of these politicians were in office, some of them were only in school, but by virtue of my previous life/job starting in 1970 worked the halls of the Cold War and had realtime information crammed into my head. As a kid I spent my self education hours studying WW2, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Now, like you, I live here and still struggle everyday to understand our new homeland. Some of you lived and worked in Russia and now live and work here, some of you married Russians as some of us married Ukrainians who were once Russians and good little members of the Communist Party. How much more down to earth inside of the head of these people can a diplomat get? Well, they cant come anywhere as close as we do. We are even closer to it we now have a foreign army camped out in one of our states, in one of our cities, riding and marching down some of our streets outside our windows with guns and armored vehicles, blocking our roads in and out of our state. We arent in Germany, Canada, or the USA. We are in Ukraine. Our home. Politicians simply do not see the whole picture and seldom have enough information to make good policy for the big picture. But they are gonna make it none the less because they know better (cough) Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But I guess one would not have to use hindsight if they were a little more in touch with reality in a place they dont even live in let alone understand. I dont mind calling a shot and being wrong if I am in the middle of it, I would feel like a bigger jackass than I already am if I lived thousands of miles away, made a faulty analysis and then shrugged off my glaring error/ignorance by using hindsight to make a better analysis.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:29:59 +0000
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