Shoes and Feet

 

I try to see things from other people’s perspectives. Like many people of my generation I was a second generation something-or-other. There was the great immigration wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through Ellis Island in New York Harbor, and I was one of their grandchildren. In my case it was eastern Europe. My grandfather was Russian, having been born between Odessa and Crimea, which is in today’s Ukraine. My grandmother was Polish, having been born further north in a region which today is, ironically, also in Ukraine. The town she was born in is just across a river which is today’s border between Poland and Ukraine. East European borders are a calliope of contradictions.

I grew up with Slavic culture saturated in 1950’s kitsch. I never knew my father’s relatives, so, sadly, I can’t speak for my western European ancestry. Not from personal experience, at least. I will always be an admirer of Queen Olga. No offence, Boudica.

I am not going to draw any moral conclusions in this essay. Not today. But I would just like to draw an analogy. I would just like to place some Slavic shoes on some Columbian feet, if I may. So. Let’s suppose.

Let’s suppose that in 1990 the United States empire was the one that was collapsing. Suppose that Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan had been negotiating the breakup of the US. It might have gone something like this. The former United States of America will be transformed into three republics: The Western Federation, the Eastern Federation, and the Prairie. With capitols being San Francisco, Washington DC, and New Orleans. The Eastern Federation would have control of the army and nuclear weapons, with negotiations on interstate commerce, rail roads, Interstate highways, the electric grid, water rights, the Internet, etc. It was a mess, but it was necessary.

The USSR would assist, obviously. It was in their interest for a former American empire to be stable and an integral part of the world’s economy, blah, blah, blah. We will provide ‘advisors’ to assist in restructuring the US economy, politics, yada, yada, yada. Here! We will even write your new constitution for you. And so forth and what not. The end was clear: The former United States were to become a vassal resource pool and dumping ground for They, the Winners. Just like every other conquest in history.

Oh, and one more thing. President Gorbachev made guarantees that the Warsaw Pact army would not move against the Americans in their weakness. Not one centimeter west! was the promise he gave. The Iron Curtain would become more of a polite Iron Picket Fence that friends could lean on and talk about the weather and walk through unlocked gates to get to each other for Sunday picnics in the park, favorite fishing holes, and whatnot. Just a way of declaring, in a friendly fashion, that here is my turf and there is yours. See! We respect each other. Picket fences, or iron curtains, make for good neighbors, after all.

Then there arose a Pharoah that did not know Joseph. A president of the USSR, let’s call him. Wilburn Clintonovitch, who wanted none of that ‘equal partner’ stuff. The USSR won, after all. We are the post Cold War Empire Supreme. Why are we not empiring? Supremely?

It started with advances west of the old Berlin wall. West Germany was invited to join the Warsaw Pact nations. As was Italy. Greece. France. Soon most of western Europe was pretty much under the auspices of the Soviet Union-for defensive purposes, of course. There were threatening governments in South America that needed to be countered. Gradually the Soviet Union’s power spread westward, like mycelia growing throughout the roots of an ancient Oak tree, mushrooms popping up along the way.

Then, Clintonovitch made up some claims about genocides and ethnic cleansing going on in California and evoked the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect to wage a full scale invasion of the Western Federation, decimating all infrastructure; water, electricity, fuel, rail roads, Interstate highways, food supplies, sewage; and left the west coast a shambles. New Mexico was declared ‘liberated’ and became an independent nation and a de facto vassal of the USSR, who immediately started building military bases on its territory, along with Oregon, Washington, and Canada.

Then in 2014 USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs Hildren Clintonova orchestrated the overthrow of the government of Prairie. “Five billion rubles,” she boasted. “We spent five billion rubles to overthrow the government of New Orleans!” And she added, “F*** the USA.” Clintonova then installed a government composed of KKK members from the southern region. There were old scores to settle. They were not too bright. But vicious. And useful if you don’t let them too close to your own country. The new government delegitimized the use of the English language and English history in schools, instead insisting on a Creole language of French, Spanish, and African dialect and claimed an ethnic ancestry with the Louisiana Territory. And a searing hatred of the northern states.

The government in Washington protested. Flustered and blustered. And filed complaints in the United Nations, which the USSR vetoed, of course, being dominated by Russian stooges and KGB agents. There was a fifth column in the Eastern Federation composed of American oligarchs who were growing rich on the wars that the Soviet Union were fomenting around the globe. Why rock the yacht? Useful idiots are infinitely available and as disposable as used condoms.

At this point in my story I would like to say that the Eastern Federation regrouped and rallied around a leader who could push back against the evils of USSR: Invincible. Someone who could electrify his base along the common bonds of religion, culture, self-sacrifice, and shared destiny. And give them strength to shelter in the bunker of last resort and never give in. Someone who would die for a cause. Someone to believe that the USA is our culture, our people, our motherland.

I don’t see it.