Donald Trump is remaking America — to be more like Putin’s Russia

It s strange So a great number of years later here in the United States of America I feel like I m living in a country threatening to become like Vladimir Putin s Russia which I spent years experiencing earlier in this century Let me tell you a little something about that For decades as a young adult I lived and traveled in Russia I was an anthropology doctoral trainee and human rights worker studying the effects of Putin s centralizing policies and of the country s Christian nationalist media on the everyday lives of Russians In one of my last projects I investigated the regime s practice of separating kids with disabilities and poorer kids generally from their parents and detaining them in closed institutions My document detailed how much changes in society when the executive excludes swaths of the population from basic services like medical care coaching and even just access to city streets The answer Everything That marginalization was part of a governing process aimed at further enriching the wealthiest limited and those in power It reflected the leadership of figures lacking a basic understanding of what all people need and deserve I consider that a hallmark of a fascist regime One of my last evenings in Russia was a chilly November night in in the northern city of St Petersburg Mothers children grandparents and teenagers alike stepped with care to avoid slipping on black ice and bumping into and possibly falling thanks to large plastic advertisements for fast food clothing cosmetic dentistry plastic surgery and even IVF treatments sticking up like weeds on the cobblestoned sidewalks of the city s center Related MAGA s war on empathy was started by a woman Those glowing placards seemed to replace what had once been a slew of different kinds of people when I first traveled to Russia as a college learner in the late s In the same central train stations of that city old women then sold carrots and beets from cardboard boxes they had lugged from their country homes Young women could sometimes be seen in bikinis and stiletto heels even in that weather with beer advertisements scrawled across their chests Uzbek and Tajik men scrambled to finish construction on new stores restaurants and apartment buildings before winter set in Roma mothers their babies strapped to their backs in jewel-toned scarves begged for money for food and housing Sometimes when traffic grew too congested for their liking Russia s newly rich aptly dubbed New Russians in the country s popular press drove their luxury Mercedes and BMWs onto the sidewalks forcing pedestrians like me along with mothers pushing strollers and a limited wind-worn men and women hurrying to work to scatter in panic Despite the chaos and a major amount of deprivation for numerous I met then much seemed manageable including working for ever larger companies migration and new luxuries Electronic remixes of Western songs like Gwen Stefani s If I Were a Rich Girl and Cher s Believe blasted from vendors tinny-sounding boom boxes on repeat Central Asian expatriates from poorer countries to Russia s south seemed ever fewer and less visible during the busiest times Indeed local agents were rounding them up and detaining them without warrants based on appearance and language alone Sound familiar By the time of my last trip to Russia in however shiny buildings had been built and older ones renovated Developers with close ties to Russia s political elite were even richer thanks to the country s growing oil wealth Roma families were no longer anywhere to be seen as St Petersburg s leadership had conducted purges of the city s informal Roma settlements Nor were old women selling their wares on the streets while Central Asian asylum seekers from poorer countries to Russia s south seemed ever fewer and less visible during the busiest times Indeed local agents were rounding them up and detaining them without warrants based on appearance and language alone Sound familiar Having spent years interviewing families who could no longer access this new cityscape with their kids who used wheelchairs or were blind or deaf all I could think was I m lucky to be able to go home to the United States That last night in I was also nearing the end of the first trimester of my first pregnancy I rubbed my still barely visible baby bump as I spotted an old friend from St Petersburg who was waiting to meet me for dinner at a nearby cafe As I sat down with her a waitress approached our table She noted my American accent and reported me with gentle motherly scorn that I shouldn t be traveling while pregnant As if on cue stomach cramps made me double up After a trip to the restroom revealed that I was bleeding I started to wonder if the waitress had been right Was it viable that my relentless tour had caused me to miscarry and in a country where I knew women sometimes faced withering criticism and blame for poor pregnancy outcomes Just stay with me until I go home I implored the baby I carried At least my friend understood Before she gave birth to her healthy son in the s when Russia s newly privatized fitness care system included insufficient viable options for working-class women it took exhausted overworked doctors weeks after she started feeling sick during her first pregnancy to determine the baby inside her had literally died She had an abortion without anesthesia and returned to her teaching job right away to make ends meet And stories like hers were anything but unique then Politicized reproductive wellbeing By urgent care clinics and hospitals were plentiful enough in large cities like St Petersburg and Moscow but a large number of were exorbitantly expensive even for young Americans like me Worse yet the attitudes of anatomical workers toward women who couldn t or wouldn t have babies had not exactly softened under a president Putin of class known for describing women as guardians of the hearth and linchpins of large families with plenty of children Fearing the worst my friend snapped into action calling around to several acquaintances until one located an obstetrician she trusted who traveled from her home on the outskirts of the city to a clinic downtown Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts In the s following the collapse of the Soviet empire the International Monetary Fund and other global lenders pushed Russia to slash residents spending and rapidly privatize state functions as part of the deal for their crucial loans to a society then in trouble In the end such changes dismantled the Soviet Union s social safety net including universal robustness care Well-connected elites carved up a multitude of of the remaining state assets and used them for their own private gain Included in Russia s newly privatized soundness care system were private clinics for the ultra-wealthy offering hotel-like amenities including private rooms tea and soft background music Ordinary Russians who couldn t afford such ritzy private services used the remaining state clinics though they were often overcrowded undersupplied and understaffed in the austere new world so a large number of Russians had no choice but to approach especially outside the big cities What s more as anthropologist Michele Rivkin-Fish has pointed out private soundness care facilities didn t mean better quality care as diagnostic workers and all kinds of society figures tended to encourage married racially white Slavic Russian women to have more children no matter the dignity and long-term physical condition of women in Russia more broadly It would be an understatement to say that by the time I left Russia in politics infused every aspect of the country s life I ll never forget for instance that a colleague of mine who researched military abuses against ethnic minorities in Russia s southernmost republics had to leave the country to give birth after she received threatening anonymous text messages claiming that she and her unborn child were linked to Islamic insurgents in that part of the country While I had certain reason to be afraid myself in that context I wasn t nearly high profile enough to truly worry and I was lucky as well After all my friend had a friend who indeed had a professional she trusted So in the end I was able to get an ultrasound which indicated that I still had a healthy pregnancy I traveled back to the U S and gave birth to my son the very same day that Donald Trump descended that golden escalator to announce his candidacy for president claiming that thousands of people were awaiting him below when only a meager result were there and launched his bid on the claim that Mexico was sending rapists to the U S Nah I thought as I watched the cooing baby in my arms Allegedly won t happen I took my boy home and being a military spouse struggled with the military physical condition insurance system Tricare AKA Try-For-Care to get coverage for basic costs like a breast pump No such luck because as an insurance representative communicated me I was supposed to stay home and breastfeed him directly As for medicine for a common mouth infection in newborns I got it but only after multiple appeals I was then in an America plagued by privatization ongoing foreign wars and a lack of corporate accountability but at least my family would be OK for now Back in the USA And here we all are I look around at what s happening in our country and I worry that we may already be on a superhighway to the sort of class- and race-stratified autocracy that it took Russia so various years to become after the Soviet Union collapsed I wish I could say that my family and yours live in a reality that s different from the one I left in Russia when I took my pregnant self home in I look around at what s happening in our country and I worry that we may already be on a superhighway to the sort of class- and race-stratified autocracy that it took Russia so a large number of years to become after the Soviet Union collapsed In particular in the years since the Supreme Court overturned the right of American women to have abortions in states have put abortion restrictions into effect including with outright bans Certain of women now live in states with such bans or notable restrictions In a handful of states like Idaho and Texas women and expectant parents have had to cross state lines to get routine miscarriage- or pregnancy-related healthcare care because doctors can face criminal or civil liabilities for providing it It may not be coincidental that in states with severe abortion restrictions infant mortality has gone up significantly particularly among people of color I could go on about the approaches this administration and its allies on the Supreme Court and elsewhere are denying poor and middle-class women basic robustness care but I m sure you already get the picture Maybe since bulk Americans haven t lived under an actual dictatorship the way numerous Russians have state capture here is faster and easier especially in a country with a resurgent evangelical right After all didn t Jesus say Suffer the little children New Americans These days a great number of people in my population and in my day job as a psychotherapist have lost hope that Donald Trump s ruling body can change things for the better Numerous tell me that they might not even vote in an upcoming voting because regime can t be trusted to tell the truth and act on behalf of ordinary people I ve heard folks say that they can rely only on themselves and maybe loved ones to help them in crises like driving across state lines for fitness care Among specific of the highly educated parents I know in my DOGE-stricken Washington D C suburb I see not mass outrage or the urge to mobilize as much as a desire to homestead and foster a post-apocalyptic self-reliance much in the style of Cormac McCarthy s novel The Road Well good luck and thanks for helping Trump consolidate power We need your help to stay independent Subscribe nowadays to endorsement Salon s commentary But for now the one thing I think we still do have that Russia doesn t is mass demonstrations like the largest part latest No Kings Day where a record seven million Americans turned out nationally We also continue to have a relatively free press which is not to be taken for granted or let go easily To show up in constituents as fully human and speak out for others is itself a sign of hope and possibility Rage-filled political leaders and their followers would not invest so much time in intimidating those who speak out if free speech didn t matter so much Think of that latest Trump-ordered military flyover while Epstein abuse survivors held a press conference outside the Capitol In days marked by so much uncompromising confrontation I m reminded of anthropology s insight that during a period of upheaval and movement the people going through it can change significantly though usually with various pitfall and pain Migrations mass demonstrations even pregnancy all of them hold the feasible for self-transformation particularly when people accompany one another on their journeys The reason we should show up at demonstrations write op-eds and protest in any way we can imagine is to stand in solidarity with one another even if we don t change the minds of the people watching us We might though In other words collective action is its own form of social transformation It is a way to forge if not a new America then new Americans who will not let democracy die without a struggle Without it I fear we re likely to end up with Donald Trump s version of Vladimir Putin s Russia at least the one I left in That s why what we all do next matters so much Remember that in a democracy we the people are the cabinet Whether we re finding a utility for someone who necessities it offering a friend in need a ride warning of federal police or National Guard in the neighborhood speaking out against abuse or just meeting friends for dinner the exercise of our civil rights is a thread from which our democracy hangs Such actions also alter the landscapes we hold in our imaginations whether we like it or not Just put as long as there are more people than military in the streets the message to those who are scared is simple This might feel like a foreign land but you re not alone Read more about Russia Why JD Vance is fighting the GOP establishment over Russia Trump baked in Alaska He grovels worse yet it s bad TV Ahead of the Trump-Putin summit don t forget what we owe Ukraine The post Donald Trump is remaking America to be more like Putin s Russia appeared first on Salon com