"Sick to my stomach"

Well it looks like I really put my foot in it this time.

This afternoon I was wasting time when I should have been doing something more productive instead, and I stumbled across a blog that I thought was interesting. It's called "Between Two Worlds" and you can find it here. 

The author is an American ... who was working as an expat in Russia a bunch of years ago (I think I saw a mention of something like 2005, or thereabouts) ... met and married a Russian woman ... moved back the the United States for eight years ... and then five years ago they all moved back to Russia. They had a couple of kids, he converted to Russian Orthodoxy, then later he actually took out Russian citizenship. He still keeps in touch with friends and family back home in the States via Facebook. In the last year, his wife died of breast cancer. And he has spent the years since they moved writing a blog about his experiences.

Of course the most recent posts have all been political, although he claims that he hates writing political posts, because the big news on everyone's mind has been the war in Ukraine. So for example he talks about what life is like under the American economic sanctions. (Short version: not that different, really; and to the extent that there has been any impact at all, it has been to make the Russian people support their government more and not less.) He talks about the news they've been getting there, which is (no surprise) very different from the news we get here. He talks about the general perception that the man-in-the-street there has of President Putin. (Again, it's no surprise that most people do not see him as the Mad Bomber.) And so on.

I thought it was interesting. I don't necessarily assume that everything he says is literally true. I figure his description of the popular mood is probably pretty accurate, because that's what I would have expected anyway. As for his account of what's going on at the front -- he's not at the front and neither am I. I surely believe that the Russian news is reporting what he says that it's reporting. Whether those reports are true is another matter. It's entirely possible that they are lies. But then, strictly speaking I have to remind myself that I'm not at the front either, so I can't confirm anything with my own eyes. If I am to be fair about it, I don't have enough data to rule out the suggestion that at least some of the news reports we get might also be lies. Do I? Can I be rigorously sure of that? Or is it not still true that truth is the first casualty in any war? Because in that case, the best I can do is to shrug and say I have no idea what's really going on, and probably nobody else does either.

But that's exactly why I found the blog so interesting. If nobody knows what's going on, then either I should listen to nobody or I should bend a tolerant ear towards everybody. So sure, I'd like to know what he says.

I emailed the link to Son 1 and Son 2, telling them I thought it looked interesting. So far I've heard nothing back, which doesn't surprise me. It's not infrequent that I send them stuff I think looks interesting, but it's very rare that they reply.

I emailed the link to Marie, Again, I've heard nothing back yet. (But really, it's been only a few hours.) I don't know what to expect from her.

And I emailed the link to Debbie. There was a little more thought behind this note than behind the others. You remember the description I gave above for the blogger? Well, by comparison, Debbie is an American ... who worked as an expat in the Soviet Union back in the 1970's ... met and married a Russian man ... and moved back to the United States. There her story and the blogger's story diverge. She and her Russian husband ended up divorcing because of ... reasons, and her life took a different path. But I really did think that if she took the time to look at this guy's life, she might find something interesting there. I sent her an email about it at 5:55pm, in which I suggested why I thought she might find it interesting some day when she had the time to read it.

At 6:21 pm -- that's 26 minutes after I clicked "Send" -- she sent me a reply. Her entire email in response read as follows:

Hi Hosea,  I read through the blog and I have to say it makes me sick to my stomach.  i don't know what else to say.

Debbie

Oops. Guess that was a swing-and-a-miss, huh?

I don't know what parts of it made her sick to her stomach, because she didn't say. It seems like she wouldn't have had a whole lot of time to read six year's worth of posts in 26 minutes -- less, actually, because you have to take out time for her to read my email and to write hers. Maybe she just looked at the first post or two? Even in those, the guy never supports overt evil, never says that it's good to club baby harp seals (which -- just to be clear -- I strenuously oppose!). In the parts I read, all he says is that most of his neighbors support Putin, because most of his neighbors believe that Putin hasn't really done the things he's accused of in the West. Maybe she read something I didn't see? Or maybe it's something else. I don't know.

I sent her back a very quick note in reply:

Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry.

Hosea

I don't know whether to expect another email from her later. We'll talk over Zoom this Friday, so maybe we can discuss it then. But clearly I screwed up. Or mis-estimated. Somehow. 

Oops.