Today’s Twitter sensation is the live coverage of a lecture by Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin. You should definitely read it to get a clearer sense of who is running Russia now and what “negative selection” means.
In a normal system with elections and a free press, a man like this would be fit to run nothing more than a cleaning subdepartment. Here, though, he is the head of the country’s largest state-owned company, a department chair at Moscow State University (!!!), the president’s closest associate, an ideologue, and the owner of fur vaults stuffed with billions.
He is spouting nonsense that would sound ridiculous to anyone with a decent higher education, yet it is being presented as philosophical revelation from those in power.
The best takeaway from the live coverage: