the last book I ever read (Rage by Bob Woodward, excerpt two)

from Rage by Bob Woodward:

“If you want to understand Russia, they haven’t changed much culturally in 1,000 years. They are the most fatalistic people on the face of the earth, which is why they’re willing to live under lousy leaders. If you ask them about it, they’d say they don’t like it, but they’d say ‘Das Russia’—‘That’s Russu\ia.’ They’d shrug their shoulders. I would talk to my Russian employees about it. Only one time did Russians rise up in revolution. And that didn’t turn out so well. So they look back on that and they say, Don’t do that again.”

Bottom line, Tillerson said, “You can deal with Putin. Obama was never able to. There is just a fundamental dislike of one another. Putin is a terrible racist, as we all know. All Russians are, generally. And Obama had a terrible disdain for Putin.”