I wanna muse a bit about the mindset of different people from a specific angle, things I noticed recently. On one side there are the Westerners, especially the USians, on the other the Eastern Euros, from Hungarians to Russians. It's about how we view the government, its actions, and the its relation to private companies, and our belief system.
The major divide comes from the historical development, how the two region evolved differently. Directly it's the result of the Cold War era, that they were in the liberal world, and us in the communist.
In the US the state viewed in suspicion, fearing from tyrants to rise. People don't want to do anything with it, they view it that the state's job to make way of private companies, the state is there to create opportunities for these companies abroad too, to intervene in the interest of these companies, then step aside. The state's job isn't making profit, but to spend so private companies can make profit. The state really is just an extension of the private sector, since all the officials, from the representatives to the president are in the pockets of the companies.
In the East the state is everything. We view it with suspicion, because we know the state holds the power, and fuck us up bad. We also stare it with awe and can't stop obeying. What the stay declare, that's official and that's what we have to believe in, the one and only thing we must think. The state's job is to own everything, and intervene everywhere directly for its own interest. Private companies are just extended state, since the owners are those who direct the state.
We also have this weird notion that in the West everyone thinks the same thing, because we have to think the same official thing, prescribed by the state. And since there is freedom there the people pick the right thing freely by themselves to believe in. And we idolize the Western state for it doesn't oppresses the people like how our state does, it literally let people think the right thing by themselves freely. So we can't fathom that some people there hates the state and view the state with suspicion, that they fear it grows into a tyrant. We can't imagine that people think many things in the West, that some believes in the weirdest, most irrational things.
Especially Russians are bad at this. They really hate those who despise the "official" line in the West, and they feel they would deserve to live in the free US and obey to the state's every word.