Let’s start with the proverbial “good news”. Actually, it’s the great news: for at least next four years America has escaped the horrible yet quite possible catastrophe. This potential nightmare has a singular name: “The President Sarah Palin”. So far, so good.
Now for the “bad news”. It also has its own name – The President Barack Hussein Obama. The following very personal notes are completely devoted to the justification of that statement.
Let me remind you one of my previous publications on this very site (“God save McCain!”). There I talked about some basic laws of any civilization, namely that “all civilizations have the finite nature. Without exception, they all have their “lifetime cycle” – rise, plateau and rather quick destruction and demise”. The transition point from the phase-2 (“plateau”) to the phase-3 (demise) is the called the “bifurcation point” - popularly known as the “point of no return”. In studying the histories of passed civilizations it’s pretty hard to pinpoint the exact date of the bifurcation – it could be done only with certain approximation. But in this particular case it could be indicated with the greatest possible precision – November 4, 2008. To me, after that day the only way for America is down, down and down. The only question remains how fast this process of degradation could be, i.e. exactly how long this phase-3 would last.
It so happens that from my initial coming to America in 1960s, first being a young Soviet exchange student in Harvard and then working in the UN Secretariat in New York, afterward during my numerous visitations for lecturing in different American universities in 1990s, and, finally, while teaching in California for ten eventful years (1995-2005), I had the unique opportunity to watch the dynamics of changes in all aspects of American life. I swear: I liked this God blessed country from the day one. Actually, I fell in love with America even BEFORE actually getting there. My favorite authors always were Ernst Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara and others. My favorite composers were George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weil and Henry Mancini. I was head-over-heels in love with American jazz and its giants - like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Billy Strayhorn, Stan Kenton and dozens of others. (And after those greatest musicians - how would you tolerate today’s dominance of those stupid, dirty, illiterate, good-for-nothing rappers and punk-rockers? Isn’t it an evident sign of degradation and demise?) The classic Hollywood movies and their incomparable stars like Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Cary Grant, Robert Taylor, Rock Hudson and hundred of others to me were second to none. Being a basketball player myself I idolized – and actually saw them on the parquet! - all the greatest American basketball stars from Bob Cousy and Bill Russell to Michael Jordan and Cobe Bryant. I could go on with this list of my sympathies for hours on end. It proves only that I always loved and still love America dearly. That’s why it hurts so bad to see it going downfall, steadily and – unfortunately – not that slowly. If anything comparable should happen to any other country – say, Sweden or Switzerland – what would I care! They are foreign to me. I wasn’t tied with them for all my life by thousand of invisible threads and after all I didn’t live there for altogether 15 years.
Being a long-time professional researcher of postsecondary education, I hate to see the once perfect quality-oriented self-regulated system of American higher education, which I used to praise and exemplified in my scientific publications, now eroding and degrading with the twisted “programs” like “affirmative action” and “cultural sensitivity”. The Humanities departments of the universities and colleges there are now ridden and practically terrorized by liberals and leftists who instead of seeking the truth and facing reality are aggressively prophesying and pursuing “political correctness”, “egalitarism”, “relativism”, “secularism”, “gay-lesbianism” and other “-isms” just as senseless and far-fetched. Paradoxical, but true: the Marxism, which has proved its complete theoretical and practical failure everywhere in the world is still alive and well only on the American campuses. The students’ textbooks are revised and corrected every year exclusively by adding more and more new chapters emphasizing “the important and decisive role of women, homosexuals and ethnic minorities” in this or that field. (If you are more seriously interested about the present state of the American higher education, I can recommend a very curious publication on the site http://vlasti.net/news/25276)
It’s no brainer to predict that the new chairs of “black and ethnic studies” now will be mushrooming everywhere. Of course, in their pseudo-scientific “studies” they will triumphantly declare that the “main cause of all problems and troubles of minorities in America – that is the “domination of DWEM*)” - is now over”. To the popular acclamation, on November 4, 2008 it was at last replaced with the brand new “ABAM*) domination”. And just because of that, surely, the America would now thrive and flourish. The only thing in this stupid formula that could be corrected yet is the last letter: replace “M” with “F” and everything will be OK. Maybe in four years they will elect Mrs. Obama just to reach this absolute perfection. (NB: I don’t know for sure about her, but Sara Palin already officially declared that “she is going to prepare for the 2012 Elections”. Now, THAT would be really the end of the world.)
You could treat it all like some innocent naïveté, if it wouldn’t be so intolerant and antagonistic to any other ideas and views. Anyway, the real dominant force, the factors that actually made America the great country as it used to be – the protestant working ethics, understanding your personal responsibility, the pioneering spirit, the drive to reach the set goals, “to dream the undreamable and to reach the unreachable” relying on their own support and the likes – right now will be all but forgotten and replaced by proclaimed near-socialist ideas and practices.
Speaking of socialism. I don’t know yet the exact statistics of different groups of American population voting for this or that particular candidate. But I am absolutely sure that the emigrants from the former “socialist” countries – like Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland and – most of all, from the former Soviet Union – in throngs were voting AGAINST Obama. I understand them completely; they all were fleeing to the USA seeking the refuge from the domestic socialism and its amenities. They all were having that wonderful image of America as a “shining castle on top of the hill”, the America that they always envisaged for themselves, the America that “used to be”, but – most unfortunately – is no more. Would any of them wanted to emigrate to Nigeria or Sudan? Nosiree, not a chance. The reason is simple. The America we always knew and, say, Russia belong to the same European civilization. Only America was much, much better by living standards. Yet it was not the main reason for such cardinal changes in one’s life. The living standards in Saudi Arabia or in Japan could be just as high or even higher, but who – I mean the Russians – would want to permanently live there? After Bolshevik upheaval many Russians were forced to immigrate to China, but they kept living there in their Kharbin enclave without mixing with the locals. It’s a different civilization, if not a hostile one; we have almost nothing in common with them. But the Russians (or any other European emigrants, for that matter) were dissolving in the American midst like sugar in the glass of hot tea. So it was in the America of yesteryears.
But now, as we learn, the “white Caucasians” - especially after deducting from their numbers the homosexuals, feminists and other pseudo-intellectuals as well as the immature youth brought up by their belligerent PC mentors – are becoming in the US a near minority. While the colored people of different shapes and shades came out as a prevailing majority of the electorate. I remember that horrifying TV picture of the line of voters in Chicago – it looked to me exactly like a line for the welfare checks. For them “the change we need” will definitely be for the better. But almost everybody forgot somehow that the verb “change” has a double meaning; it could be just as well the “change” for worse too. Summing up all the dynamics of “changes” I witnessed in America for the last 40 years and forecasting the future by extrapolating such evidently revealed existing trends, with the greatest pain I can ascertain that the latter alternative - “change for worse” - is much, much more probable.
On the next day after elections a correspondent from one of the Moscow radio stations called me asking for my comments on the elections outcome. In turn, I inquired him first: how he wants me to respond – politically correct or truthfully? He was baffled a little, but said: “could you really do it both ways?” I said, sure, it’s easy. The PC answer could be very short and just as shallow: “we do respect the political choice of the laborious and talented people of America”. But like with every PC statement it’s a sheer lie. Since the whole point is that the overwhelming majority of the “laborious and talented” voted against Obama. They are the hard-working professionals, relying entirely on their professionalism, experience and dedication. They do not need any government crotches of any kind – they represent the backbone of American economy. They are the real core of America, who made it great and once prosperous country. “Change you needed”? - change you got. The question is who will benefit from it.
As for the American-Russian relations it is now a big Q – which way they will turn? Unfortunately, most likely they will worsen; yet theoretically they can improve – and that would be a near miracle. What’s left for me is only to hope and pray for the latter.
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*) DWEM – D ead White European Males; ABAM – Alive Black African Males;
