For the Laughs... or dead serious:
via @bill_easterly
Throw in Russia into the above equation and the 'mud' gets epic. Turgenev once said that "We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars"... it is clearly a permanent cloud cover in the US / Western politics... Or as Wislawa Szimborska wrote: "In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed."