Like the Soviet Union in its final years, the United States is reeling from catastrophic failures of leadership and long-suppressed socioeconomic tensions that have finally boiled over. For the rest of the world, the most important development is that the hegemony of the US dollar may finally be coming to an end.
PRINCETON – The Soviet Union was fertile ground for political jokes, which featured as prominently in the culture as late-night comedy does in the United States. According to one popular story, a young man who shouted in Red Square that the decrepit Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was an idiot ended up being sentenced to 25.5 years in prison – six months for insulting the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and 25 years for revealing state secrets.
PRINCETON – The Soviet Union was fertile ground for political jokes, which featured as prominently in the culture as late-night comedy does in the United States. According to one popular story, a young man who shouted in Red Square that the decrepit Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was an idiot ended up being sentenced to 25.5 years in prison – six months for insulting the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and 25 years for revealing state secrets.