Just Say No To The New Cold War

I just watched Morning Joe. His sidekick asked one of the guests if Sarah Palin's speech will "resonate with the polls." Over on Fox, they were covering the arraignment of Detroit's mayor (I guess they can't resist watching a black man go down. It's like porno for them). One of Rupert Murdoch's peroxide banshees remarked that this will give Detroit "a black eye."

I'm not making this up. I couldn't make this up.

Meanwhile, an insignificant item rolled along the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen: Dick Cheney has arrived in Georgia. He's condemned Russia's "illegitimate" attempt to change Georgia's borders and re-affirmed our support for their desire to join NATO.

Now, back in the Golden Age of Clinton, I spent a couple of summers in St. Petersburg. I was ostensibly a grad student studying Russian, but in reality I whiled away the White Nights sampling the gazillion brands of vodka on offer at every Russian grocery store and chasing after the legions of jaw-droppingly gorgeous Russian girls on Nevsky Prospect (the best kept secret of of the Cold War, hidden from us for all those lost years -- yet another reason to hate the CIA). I lived with, ate and drank with ordinary, working-class Russians. Let me state that Russians are the kindest, most hospitable people in the in the world (and I've been around). On the street, they look like angry linebackers, but stop one and ask a question and their faces will light up and they'll talk for hours. They have a beautiful, deep, brooding culture that is totally opposite from America.

There lies the rub.

America is tap-dancing, Holleywood and bullshit optimism. Russia is neurotically wary of the past. They've been invaded by Sweden, France, and twice by Germany. They see us absorbing Ukraine, Belarus and now (vide Cheney) Georgia, into NATO, which is a military alliance aimed directly at Russia. NATO, in the words of one-time British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (a big, blowsy motherfucker with forearms like Popeye) was designed to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out. On my second trip to St. Petersburg, liberal hero Bill Clinton was bombing the shit out of Belgrade, and every Russian I talked to, every Russian I talked to, asked me "Why is Clinton bombing Serbia?" (That was after they asked me why we were making such a big fuss over Monica. My Russian is pretty bad, so I just shrugged my shoulders and said ne znayou - - I don't know). They were genuinely paranoid about U.S. intentions, folks. They are afraid of us. So the next time you here Frank Gaffney or William Kristol or George Will blather on about "Russian Aggression" just know that there are two sides to the story. The Russians are scared shitless by America. They see us encircling their country with a ring of hostile countries bought and armed by us. They see us doing the exact same thing the British tried to do to them in the nineteenth century. History means nothing to Americans; it means everything to the Russians.

I've long thought that America and Russia should get their shit together and reach an understanding. Because there is a big, bad old/newcomer on the block called China, which is currently receiving it's long awaited Mandate of Heaven. I once sat on a plane from Peru next to a Chinese girl. She told me there are over three hundred million unmarried men in China. That is more than the entire population of the United States. Guess what, when three hundred million men can't get laid, wars begin. What do think the Iliad was all about?

Vodka, anyone?