If you just get the “context” right, you can turn black into white, night into day.

“Context: The majority of U.S. Mission Russia employees are not Americans, and won’t be expelled: Of 1,200 people employed in 2013 in Mission Russia, 333 were U.S. citizens and 867 were Foreign National Staff, most of whom were probably Russian nationals. Using the 2013 numbers, if the U.S. Mission is forced to let go of 755 people, a majority of them would not be U.S. citizens, and probably would not be expelled from the country.”

—The Real Russia. Today, July 31, 2017, Meduza′s daily English-language email newsletter

No, but lots of those pesky Russian nationals, perhaps the majority, would be fired from their jobs thanks to Putin’s little presidential campaign stunt. They would be instantly unemployed and, perhaps, unemployable.

Is that cause for rejoicing in Connecticut or wherever the newsletter’s editor really lives?

And what reason could the current Russian government (not the Soviet government, which did such things) have for expelling its own citizens?

Are we already that far along in the re-Stalinization process?

As a friend of mine who works at the Moscow embassy wrote in response to Meduza′s amazingly clueless and insensitive exercise in contextualizing, “I am speechless.” TRR

_________