Roxy TS #18

Amir and I seem to circle around the endlessly interesting conversation topic of comparative government. We landed on this topic again during our tutoring session; it seems to get at some of the fundamental differences between American life and life in Kazakhstan (which is heavily influenced by Russian government styles). We agree that, at first glance, the countries seem quite different in terms of how they run their government and how the people of each country react to the various levels of incompetence and criminal activity in their government representatives and structures. However, the deeper we get into this ongoing conversation, the more we come to find that both governments are deeply corrupt and prey upon their people—Kazakhstan is simply more overt and its people are more aware of the corruption. We have come to the conclusion that in the United States, the situation might be even more sad because the majority of Americans seem either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the deep corruption in their government. The point of these conversations, for us, is to unpack how American thinking is different from where Amir is from. I am glad to talk about these things because Amir really wants to learn about American life and our relationship with our government is an integral part of that.

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