The Year of My Discontent

I have been wondering why I am so at odds with the world around me lately. Why am I so upset by the realities around me? Why do I feel so disappointed in this country, so betrayed by it? After all, it is not even truly my country to begin with. What do I care if it turned out to be sold out to special interests, and that it lacks freedom of speech, and offers propaganda in place of the news, and substitutes moral values with money and religion?

This is not simply a mid-life crisis, although I concede that my sentiments may be particularly painful because of that, too. I realized after a while that what I am living through is the fall of my belief system, of a certain ideal I had in my mind, a crisis of consciousness. Many people experienced the same in Russia with the advent of perestroika which all of a sudden made it clear that people who had been glamorized throughout the history of the Soviet State were some of the worst and most savage criminals in history, that the society's value system was all based on a myth, that the very idea on which the country was built was stripped of its worth, flogged and spat at in front of our eyes. As a result, a huge void formed in the Russian society in the place where the soviet value system once stood. And that system was an exact equivalent of a religion with its iconostasis, Lives of the Saints, its own Bible and the religious texts. The iconoclasm of the 1990's did not bring in new values to the society, and the gaping hole is being filled with a mix of Orthodox Christianity, cynicism, cult of money and material success, and the emerging nationalism.

Anyway, I did not live through a crisis of consciousness back then because I was raised in an anti-communist household. It was clandestine anti-communism, and I knew from the early age not to repeat elsewhere what I heard at home. My Dad grew up in a village in the Russian North where many political exiles were sent to live. While growing up, he heard them tell stories about Stalin's atrocities, he imbibed the atmosphere critical of the current regime and its ideology. And he generously shared it with me. So I definitely did not partake of the culture of communist brainwashing, and thus the crash of that culture did not affect me as anything but liberation.

What I did believe in were the ideals of a free world. Of capitalist entrepreneurship, reward for hard work, talent, persistence. Freedom of speech, freedom of beliefs. Justice free from ideology. I thought that America was the country that lived and breathed those ideals. We came here in good faith, we worked hard, and without any public assistance ever we made a very good living for ourselves. I did not pay much attention to George Bush the 1st - we were too busy building our life in America back then. I was horrified and disgusted by the immoral rule of Bill Clinton with an orgy of materialistic excesses and consumerism we saw around us. The fact that the sleazy Bill could get away with anything did not sit well with us. We voted for George Bush both times thinking that his Republican ideas will usher in the era of personal responsibility, human decency, hard work. Instead he busied himself with enriching a few people at the top and completely pillaging the country destroying its manufacturing base, unleashing unnecessary wars under false pretenses and brainwashing, brainwashing, brainwashing us.

And then as a final blow and an eye-opener came Georgia. That is Georgian attack on Ossetia which historically has never been a part of Georgia as a country, and which declared its own independence of Georgia at the time when Georgia became a separate state after the fall of the Soviet Union. Georgian tanks rolled into the streets of the sleeping town on Tskhinval in the dead of the night on August 8, 2008 when the world was busy watching the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing. From the antiquity wars were stopped for the duration of the Olympics, so to start a war at the opening of the Olympic Games certainly was a new low in the international relations. And those tanks were shelling residential buildings killing peaceful population, as well as Russian peace keepers who were on the territory of Ossetia by the international mandate. As a response, Russia brought in its own troops, quickly overturned the "brave" US-trained Georgian forces and advanced into Georgia. It was VERY clear who was in the right, and who was in the wrong. But ALL AMERICAN NEWS SOURCES CHOSE to represent the story as a insidious attack of Russians against peaceful pro-Western Georgians. There were more balanced accounts in European mass media, but in the US there was no place for any other view of the situation except the officially endorsed one. That is when the last curtain fell from my eyes, and I realized that our mass media are not interested in reporting news to us, they are not interested in informing us, they are interested in indoctrinating us and carrying out orders coming from some masters invisible to us.

(Of course, in the time which has elapsed since the Georgian attack, an official European report has found Georgia as an aggressor, but that information, too, which made headlines in Europe, was printed in small print in the mid-sections of our newspapers and with the headers like "The report blames the war on both, Russia and Georgia." Lies, lies, lies. Seriously, no better than what the communists printed in Russia.)

Then I saw how our newly elected President is interested in solely saving his Wall-Street puppeteers, how he continues to escalate the wars which we cannot afford, and I realized that this country is not at all ruled by a democratically elected President and Congress, but rather by a few special interest groups behind the screens. And that those groups do not hold anything sacred - not their country, not God, not justice, not morals - except the Almighty Dollar. And this is when my internal crisis hit me.

Now I experience a void of values to believe in. Capitalism has disgraced itself in my eyes. Religion holds next to no appeal to me - I see it as an unverifiable tale employed by a religious establishment to provide a fairly good living for themselves. I do not see a change I can believe in. I am lost. I am disgusted. I am coming to realization that the only thing in life worth worshiping and admiring is art and human thought. I am preparing for the internal immigration. Good-bye, America! I believed in you. I was wrong.