Winter in Michigan is bleak. It's cold, grey,filthy and dark for months. It's incredible to me that members of our species would even settle here. Life could be so much easier. It reminds me of all those depressing Russian books books I read in college. I always image Russia to be like Michigan in the winter, only all the time.
Russia was huge to Americans back then and it made us feel a lot better about being us. That is a big deal and it's precisely why we didn't have the domestic hatred toward our own nation by the disaffected portion of society here. It wasn't as fashionable to hate America back then because we were the good guys. Now we're the Romans.
I still point at laugh at russia.