In April this year I had the opportunity to give a talk at Smith College with Martin Müller and Chris Gaffney. The event was called Sport Mega Events and Urban Development: Cases of Brazil 2014, Rio 2016, Sochi 2014, Russia 2018, and it was hosted by Andrew Zimbalist. If you don’t know him, Andrew is a sports economist, hugely accomplished, a very friendly man and admirably prolific.

After the talk, Andrew took us out for dinner. And over beers he started asking me about developments in Russia, particularly about the World Cup and – of course – the recent US election. We were all still reeling from November  2016, remember. And he asked me, as someone who’s lived in and loved Russia since 1998, what I thought about Russian meddling in the election.

Now, on one hand this is a huge scholar talking to me and there could be (should have been?) some respect for our different statuses, some sort of caution or restraint that I should show in our conversation. After all, he’s written something like 24 books and testified in Congress. On the other hand, in a weird way he sort of reminded me of my father and his family, and our loud and lovely political pilpul. So I did not give a considered response and instead said “meddling? What meddling?” The evening kind of went downhill from there.

L’esprit de l’escalier is a wonderful term, describing that feeling when you come up with the perfect retort… but you’re already outside on the stairway, going home. I’ve been feeling this spirit off and on all year.

What I tried – but failed – to say is that I find the idea of Russian meddling problematic. Not because people in the Kremlin and the Russian security services did or didn’t try something, and not because their efforts may or may not have been successful. (Truthfully there is an awful lot of evidence now that they did try and did succeed at… at what? At something nefarious, at least! Where there’s smoke, there’s collusion…)

No, what concerned me then and still concerns me now is the difficulty in separating the facts from the staggering waves of anti-Russian hysteria. There is a real danger, I think, in blaming Russia for our own domestic problems. Russia did not tank our economy, Russia did not ship American jobs overseas, Russia did not spend the last few decades systematically defunding our education system and atomizing our population into easily manipulated and ideologically defined subgroups. Russia did not destroy our media landscape and Russia did not create the electoral college abomination that periodically allows the loser of the popular vote to win. And Russia did not force a staggering number of white women to vote for Trump. But Russia is blamed for Trump, because I think it’s hard for us non-MAGA Americans to accept the huge divides in our country, and it’s easier to blame a boogeyman.

Russia is such a convenient boogeyman. It’s like going back to your old neighborhood where everything makes sense. I really don’t think we’ve quite got our footing since the end of the Cold War. What’s to justify our massive military expenditures if we don’t have to keep communism from destroying the world?

The trouble here is that there’s a lot of noise in the signal. It’s awfully hard to see what certain nefarious Russian actors actually did when they are blamed for everything and anything. It’s funny, in a twisted sort of way, to see how democrats and republicans shift in their relationship to Russia over the years. I never thought I’d see the day when anti-Russian Reaganites would change their tune.

My preferred approach of late is to view these diabolical people not as Russians or Americans, per se, but rather as a group unto themselves: they are all oligarchs. In this, Russians and Americans really do have a lot in common. We are both beset by wealthy, unscrupulous, nasty dudes. Truly bad hombres with no regard for the law or the land or the people. I would like to live in a world where these disgustingly wealthy criminals are punished for their crimes, imprisoned, removed from office and boardroom, so that Russians and Americans alike could make our countries more egalitarian and democratic and kind. To pull these ticks out of the body politic is my New Years dream.

I wish I could’ve said this better back in April with Andrew. Next time, maybe. Happy New Year one and all! С новым годом!