The Sovok

[Cain]

In Russia they have a word, sovok, which described the craven, chickenshit mindset that over the course of decades became hard-wired into the increasingly silly brains of Soviet subjects. It's a hard word to define, but once you get it -- and all Russians get it -- it's like riding a bicycle, you've got it. Sovok is the word that described a society where for decades silence and a thoughtful demeanor might be construed as evidence of a dangerous dissidence lurking underneath; the sovok therefore protected himself from suspicion by babbling meaningless nonsense at all times, so that no one would accuse him of harboring smart ideas.

A sovok talked tough, and cheered Khruschev for banging a shoe at America, but at the same time a sovok would have sold his own children for a pair of American jeans. The sovok talked like a romantic and lavished women with compliments, but preferred long fishing trips and nights spent in the garage tinkering with his shitty car to actual sex. It's hard to explain, but over there, they know what the word means. More than anything, sovok described a society that spent seventy years in mortal terror of new ideas, and tended to drape itself in a paper-thin patriotism whenever it felt threatened, and worshipped mediocrities as a matter of course, elevating to positions of responsibility only those who showed an utter absence not only of objectionable qualities, but any qualities at all.

We're getting to be the same kind of people. We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense -- while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we... shit, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

I'm just tired of this tone that's always out there when these scandals break, like we can't fucking stand the existence of this Wright fellow for even a minute longer, not a minute longer! -- when we all know that come Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, Jeremiah Wright will be forgotten and we'll be jumping en masse in a panic away from the next media-offered shadow to fall across our bow. What a bunch of turds we all are, seriously. God help us if we ever had to deal with a real problem.

- Matt Tiabi

[East Coast Hustle]

[Cain]

I like to think Tiabbi is helping the English language evolve here.

We need moar Soviet slang, for these dark days.

[Reeducation]

Na hui, pljät. 

[Pope Shiny Beads]

Are we all being more 'Sovok' like, its hard to argue against it, leaving through the checkout isles while picking up my weekly allotment of soylent green, soylent yellow, and soylent red, I see the glossies like everyone else forced to sit there for the requisite five minutes thinking where has the Weekly World News gone?  The ONLY thing ever worth reading while sitting there has left the building... but forced to see commentary from The National Enquirer about Wright (on the front page no less) was a bit disconcerting, at least The Enquirer had some decency to be crazy about things, let alone all the usual suspects on US, People, Cosmo, and more... I am not even American, and I am sick of it.  I wonder if we swapped all this stuff out one day with lesser known magazines like Mole and Shrew Monthly, & Chess Life, if people would switch their opinions on things for just a moment.  But obviously its not just checkouts, I mention that only because its one of the few ways I am 'forced' to sit and see these things, others aren't so lucky, they see it more often than I ever do.  But it might help the discussion change just for a moment... and make people think a little bit differently even if just for a moment.