The brutal suppression of Chechnya was bad enough. Vladimir Putin's obstinate refusal to consider Bill Clinton's gift of a joint missile-defense system was discouraging. The veneration of the Communist state, for so long a staple of Soviet society, hobbles the mind well unto the sixth power. A mind acclimated to state socialism will acclimate to anything. Consider, for example, the veneration in the old Soviet Union of that abomination of every written language with one, the exclamation point.
Good writers avoid the exclamation point, and conscientious editors delete it with delight.
The editor in chief of this newspaper, a bit of an old crab, has more or less threatened to terminate with extreme prejudice the next writer who uses one. Delete them all. A period does nicely. This applies to all copy, staff, wire, syndicate and otherwise. Naturally a country as primitive and backward as the old Soviet Union, with aging commissars still a step or two this side of the graveyard, have a different view of the exclamation point.