putin who?

okay, so the subject is a little overstated. i have to admit though, that this topic is a little out of my league - i'm not very knowledgeable about russian anything, my main information source being jane's russia blog and a couple of linked articles. that said, i can sure express some opinions so here goes:
if the people let putin stay in power because of their lack of political motivation, that is their business. similarly if we, in the united states, don't utilize our power and vote, then to an extent it is our own fault that our government doesn't fully represent the wishes of the people. i am not in favor of a one or two-party system. i would love it if multiple parties were able to back candidates, giving us many choices of people for whom we could vote. yes, that would "split" the democrat and republican votes, but then each candidate would be able to earn votes based on their own merit and we wouldn't hear any stupid crap reasoning like: "at least he's not bush". i don't think we should vote for someone because they are the lesser of two evils. i think we should be able to vote for someone whose politics we actually support. i know it's not likely to ever happen, but i guess i'm a dreamer.
wow. that wasn't about russia. sorry.
so putin wants to remain in power and the people aren't doing anything about it. so? like stephanie said, there's no need for us to force other countries to adopt our political system. as long as russia isn't oppressing other countries, it's none of our business. look at china: their government supports some of the worst human rights programs in the world, but as long as they stay within their own country we do nothing about it besides an angry letter once in a while. and i think that's sad, but i also think that we have to be that way. it's bad enough that we're policing other countries in the world when they abuse each other, let alone if we were to invade just because we dislike what they're doing within their own borders. (i really didn't mean to tie this to iraq so i'm not even going to go there). basically, as long as russia is minding its own business, we should mind ours by not interfering. not that there's anything wrong with following the news. it's great to be knowledgeable. it's just not so great to force our opinions on other people. for example, when the chileans elected communist salvador allende to office, the u.s. self-righteously went in and "fixed" that, giving power to pinochet. i know that we dislike communism, but is pinochet really better? not for us, but for the people who voted not to have him as their leader. we should have stayed out.
yeah, i'm kind of a separatist - in a manner of speaking. i don't think that the u.s. should be responsible for taking care of everyone else. in a perfect world, the united nations (or some similar organization) would operate as moderater/mediator in the affairs of the nations of the world, and each nation would be free to run its own government.
wow again. i really have a hard time keeping to topic. feel free to comment on my tangents though.