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To be fair, the same applies to all the western governments as well. The only difference is westerners aren't as cynical.
Sometimes I think there are parts of a culture that are not communicable unless a person spends considerable time inside that culture.
This is a subjective and completely anecdotal take: the amount of lying that happens in Eastern European cultures (and others too, probably) is difficult to imagine for someone from a high-trust society. It's just hard to imagine that people could lie for almost no reason at all, I guess. It's somewhat similar in that way to corruption: many of my American friends think they live in a corrupt society. I grew up in a society where my mother, just before ejecting me from her womb, had to present a 'gift' of cognac to the doctor, the head nurse, and the receptionist. A society where lying is as common as asking "How ya doing?" or talking about the weather is in the US.
Lying about big things. Small things. And that gets you accustomed to not relying on anything anyone has said. Did an online merchant say they sent you the item you paid for? Or did the clerk at the store promise your construction materials will be delivered by eod tomorrow? Or perhaps your employee called out sick? There is no way you could know for sure. The only way to increase reliability is to increase the effects of retaliation--hit people where it hurts--meaning, their long-term social standing. So you get to know the other party's friends and family so when an occasion for renege on a promise, the cost of doing so involves shame, perhaps even some ostracism if the stakes are high enough.
In contrast, while you still have a bunch of lying going on in a high-trust society, the happens sporadically enough that it's effective to bet that the other party mostly truthful most of the time: most business concludes in a predictable way.
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To be fair, it does not. American government could do most of its business (excluding some spy matters, etc.) without lying, and it wouldn't break anything much. Of course, it doesn't matter American government does not lie - unfortunately, especially recently, it lies a lot, but these lies are more aimed at subverting the government to use it for private or partisan needs than a foundational necessity of governing. As it exists in Russia now, the lies are foundational for the government there. If American politicians stopped lying, we'd have a bit less rich politicians, and maybe some shuffling of the names on the doors, but the government would be largely the same. If Russian politicians stopped lying, Russia would descend into chaos.
Could the federal government also just stop lying that affirmative action works, that right-wing extremists pose the largest terrorist threat, that Common Core and other programs targeting disparate racial outcomes work etc. without significant political consequences? Is that what you really believe?
Yes.
I mean, surely there would be consequences, as names on the doors change and money stops to flow in the hands of one set of grifters and inevitably starts to flow into another, and so on. Instead of Common Core, we'd have Educational Excellency, and affirmative action university attendees would go back to sportsman's scholarships or something other designed for the same purpose (of getting that sweet federal loan money without actually trying hard to educate someone). That wouldn't change the overall political system. Withdrawing governmental meddling with education - both by prescribing standards and providing a torrent of tax money - would lead to some significant changes, but that is not based on lies. Everybody knows the government meddles, and everybody (about 98% of voters at least) wants it to meddle, the only difference is how exactly it meddles and who benefits from it. The system is not a secret, there's no lie there and everybody agrees with it - the only contention is who gets the profits and who is left holding the externalities.
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I really don't see how you can come to this conclusion, but on the other hand I don't see how we could resolve our dispute barring a visit to a parallel universe. Maybe I'm underestimating people's capacity for doublethink, but I find it hard to imagine that most people truly believing we live in a mostly democratic society would shrug of their government went full yes_chad.jpg at every accusation they're using their alphabet agencies against their own citizens in order to suppress dissent. Several past wars that happened in the last two decades would also be a hard sell, if all the governments would be forced to tell the truth. Same for policies that they chose to pursue in the aftermath of these wars. Or what they're doing or not doing in the name of climate change. If they even just stopped lying about the culture war issues, that would either have massive impacts on current policy, or would require shifting to a fully jack-booted fascist state.
Again, you are confusing two things. Let me give you an example. We know US government orchestrated the suppression of the Hunter laptop story. We know there was a lot of lying involved. Did it impact the policies? Hugely. Imagine they wouldn't be able to do that. What would be different? Would we have a different name on the door of the Oval Office? Sure. (yes, I know there's not the actual name, I am speaking metaphorically). Would the Federal Government look differently, US political system work differently, Congress work differently, SCOTUS work differently? Not substantially. The political decisions certainly would differ, but the system would remain mostly the same. Same about climate change. Right now we waste trillions of dollars and sacrifice quality of life and sometimes lives on the altar of the Angry Gaia cult. If we stopped to do that, would those dollars and lives be saved? Sure. Would America work differently? Not much, it'd work the same, but better. Sure, a bunch of old hippies and young idiots would be pissed off (which they are permanently even now, tbh) but it'd be the same country with the same political system, it's not a fundamental systemic change.
This statement is doing all the work for you. If you had different names on the doors of Russian offices, it would probably be on par the US, and maybe even surpass it. My entire point is that just because people in power are not allowed to lie, it doesn't mean they will be stop doing what they wanted to do, or let go of power.
That's the whole point, it wouldn't. Not in the Russia as it is today. It's not 140 millions of people under the magic spell of a single Volde-Putin. It's a country whose moral fiber is by now profoundly rotten and corrupt. That's what allows Putin and his henchmen to thrive. Changing the names wouldn't help anymore (maybe if it happened 20 years ago, it could, but not today).
I'm struggling to find a way to push this conversation in a productive direction, we're pitting my gut instinct about the relative corruption of each society against yours, with no to externally verify or disprove either.
But I just don't see where you're coming from. I conceded the "different names on the doors" thing, because, sure if you purge every psycho all the way from the President's office to your local high school, and replace them with half-decent people, sure things might end up just being mostly the same, but better. Same thing applies to Russia, although you seem to think they're all vile subhuman orcs. My issue is that you won't be able to get rid of the sociopaths from the western establishment by forcing them to tell the truth. Much like Putin wouldn't stop the invasion of Ukraine if he couldn't lie, instead of droning on about denazifiaction or special military operations, he'd probably just say "they're getting a bit too close to the west, if we're going to stop them, it's now or never". The same way, western elites wouldn't just quietly resign, they'd just tell you the truth, and if you didn't like it, they'd clamp down on dissent even harder.
No, I think they are vile humans, who behave like a bunch of orcs. And the web of lies they live in enables and helps them to behave that way. To be sure, not everybody in Russia is like that - but enough to form a stable majority on which dictators like Putin can thrive.
No, if he didn't lie, he'd say "we've got too many problems in Russia, mostly caused by me and my people being a bunch of thieving criminals who are quite bad at managing a country, and we need something to make you idiots stop asking questions and look at me like your savior. Or at least enough of you so I could brutally suppress the rest without a risk of being hanged on a lamppost. So that's what we'd do - I'll take some half million of you and send to murder people into the neighboring country. Most of you will be killed or wounded. You will get absolutely nothing for it but death, pain, suffering and hate of people all around the globe. But I and a bunch of my henchmen would be secure in our positions for another decade. Good deal, isn't it?"
All these tales about how Russia is oh so much threatened by the West is just another bunch of lies. Nobody in the West had seen Russia as an enemy mere 15 years ago (remember "the 80's called and they want their foreign policy back"? Sick burn, eh? Oh, how did they laugh on those stupid neanderthals still seeing Russia as an enemy! Next thing they'd fight George III!) All that narrative was manufactured exactly so that people would buy into it - and to Putin's delight, not only Russians but a lot of Americans swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Ok. The same is true in the west, except we have pretend-democracy instead of obvious dictatorship.
The hypothetical we're examining is that leaders cannot lie, not that they have to tell the entire truth, and especially not the truth as you see it.
What?! I'm pretty sure "Ukraine wants to become more democratic, cut ties with Russia, and develop relations with the west, and Putin cannot abide a free prosperous society at his doorstep" is the pro-Ukrainian narrative.
That's a bit of a naive view of geopolitics. Hostilities rise and fall, but fundamentally they were always players on opposite sides of the game. They were always enemies to some extent, and always will be until one side loses, or becomes too distant to matter.
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Bush did it about AT&T Room 641a, and Obama did it about the Snowden revelations. They didn't even promise to stop (nor, of course, did they).
"Every" is doing some work in my statement, if it only happens now and again people can always say "well, that was an exception". But yeah, I'm not dismissing the doublethink hypothesis.
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