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‘Does Your Blood Not Run Cold?’
Watching the Super Bowl last night, I was reminded of a brilliant insight I learned a few weeks ago from a public intellectual. Well, actually, it was my barber. But whatever. I went to Sport Clips to get a haircut, and my usual girl wasn’t there. There was a 30ish-year-old white lady with an Eastern European accent. Turns out she’s Ukrainian, and moved to the states with her Mom when she was 15 years old. Her uncle was accused of being critical of the communists, and he ‘disappeared’ soon thereafter. Her mother got them out soon after that. As you might imagine, she is not a fan of Putin.
Anyway, she cuts my hair poorly, but rapidly. Which is fine with me. With a face like mine, you tend to lose interest in appearances. But I like speed. She takes maybe five minutes to cut my hair, which then looks like I cut it myself with a weed whacker. But whatever.
She never stops talking. Very rapidly, like she cuts hair. She is extremely critical of “soft, stupid Americans” who don’t understand the threat of leftism they’re faced with. She said that no one who had grown up in Ukraine would ever vote Democrat. Then she said that wasn’t true – that even there they had fools who would willingly surrender their freedom to whoever promises to take care of them. Even if they know they’re lying. She then described her view of these people with language that I will leave out of this post. She sounds angry and disgusted. Maybe that’s why my hair looks like this now. But whatever.
Anyway, what had her all riled up was the blatant cooperation of the American big government party (Democrats) with big corporations, the media, the entertainment industry, the educational establishment, social media billionaires, and the FBI and other federal bureaucracies. She said that such unified, cooperative efforts at gaining control, followed by distribution of a share of the resulting power and wealth, looked very familiar to her Ukrainian eyes.
I explained that for a typical person, who’s not all that interested in politics, all they ever see is leftism, so they start to view it as the ‘normal.’ If all you ever see favors Democrats, of course, it’s only natural to vote Democrat, right?
She was unconvinced by this argument. She corrected me. Forcefully:
“Who can view the array of such powerful forces forming an all-powerful coalition, and not feel fear? Does your blood not run cold? They build a coalition with the openly expressed goal of taking your freedoms, and whatever else they want, and they have all the powerful organizations on their side – and you then vote for them? DOES YOUR BLOOD NOT RUN COLD?”
She then proceeded to describe her view of such gullible Americans using language that I will leave out of this post. At this point, she sounded exasperated. And furious. To her, this is no joke.
That was a few weeks ago. Her manic fury has faded in my mind somewhat and my hair is starting to look a little better.
And then last night, I was watching the Super Bowl. Attempting to watch a bit of football between the endless barrage of social justice leftism from the announcers, the players, the public service announcements, the pregame show, the ads, the NFL public statements, and essentially everyone else on the TV for the entire evening.
Absolutely everyone else on TV. Biden called for unity. And they were united. Like a precision drill team, they were united. Against me. And they made that perfectly crystal clear. Over and over and over again.
And my blood ran cold.
She has a point.
Once I got to Bruce Springsteen discussing the RE-United States of America, I saw her point very clearly. This is no joke. The American left is very open about their goals, and they’re terrifying, and they will not be easily undone. Even if we have fair elections in the future, which is by no means a given.
I can see why she’s so angry.
For me, the future is uncertain and scary. For her, the past is certain and horrifying. She’s seen this before and escaped it. She does not want to see it again.
As our future gets closer to her past, her blood runs cold.
Published in General
What a nice thing to say! Thank you!
And welcome aboard – great to have you.
Although to be more precise, I type well. My writing is not so good.
When I first heard her speak, I thought her accent was Russian. Thank God I asked where she was from before I presumed. I suspect that calling her Russian would not go well…
I’m always fascinated how often people from other socialist countries (particularly former Eastern Bloc) warn us over and over again about where we’re heading. I remember one letter writer to our local newspaper attempted to rebut a previous writer’s letter denouncing socialism. He stated, “I lived in a socialist country for a while and it was perfectly fine.” He was referring to France.
I wanted to write a letter asking him two questions: 1) would you say the same thing if you had lived in Russia the same amount of time, and 2) if France was such a freakin’ socialist Utopia, then why the hell did you come back here?
Great post as usual, Doc . . .
By the same token, Russians who grew up in Ukraine do not want to be called Ukrainian. I had an employee for several years who was from Sevastopol but would always remind people she was Russian. Another fierce anti-communist, her Polish husband managed to get them both out in the early 80s. Her son (who was a high school classmate of mine) was another matter. He gradually veered off and has become a very vocal leftist.
That’s incredible. Did he learn nothing from his parents?
Geez, his parent must have been thrilled…
His parents made pots of money in the Warsaw pact collapse (part of how his dad got them out was… he was very very good at finding corrupt officials). So their son was extremely spoiled (seriously – when he wrecked the car he parents gave him at 16, rolling it by taking an off-ramp curve too fast, his parents punished him by getting him a brand new Ford Taurus SHO), and very smart and cocky, so he had his pick of schools and graduate schools. He defended his views claiming that what he was advocating bore no relation to actual communism (which he derided as grubby polluting industrialism), but rather to a more enlightened world. Very strange guy all around.
People who are sheltered from reality tend to struggle with reality.
My wife is deaf and she has deaf friends who are married. The wife is from Russia, the husband from the Ukraine, they met here in the US. I met him when I worked at Dell, the factory I designed and supported was where they put all the deaf workers. Strangely enough, that’s not how I met my wife. S0, that was a weird coincidence.
Anyway, they were making good money, especially considering that they are deaf and foreigners. Big house, nice cars, etc. Then one day they quit their jobs and started a business. What business? They opened a food truck to make crepes. They had never made a crepe before. I remember watching him with a couple of brand new circular crepe irons (or whatever they’re called), and trying to learn how to make crepes — after he had already bought the truck and quit his job.
He had an idea for a business that didn’t exist before, so far as I knew, and he was going to give up everything to do it.
Years later, after I went to law school, they asked me to look over a leasing contract for their first brick and mortar restaurant. They now have three locations, I believe. They had a gig at the Texas state fair for a while.
So, just so I’m clear: These people are deaf, which is a huge challenge in life. They came to the country as adults, learned our language through sign language, which is an amazing accomplishment, quit nice safe jobs to start a risky business that they knew absolutely nothing about and have been great successes. I’ve not seen them in a while. I suspect the corona is hurting them badly.
We have a great country. If you’re in Austin or Baltimore, consider giving their eatery a try, the name is Crepe Crazy, and their employees are all deaf. They are great Americans.
Two of my cousins moved here from the USSR when they were in their late teens and early teens respectively. The younger one speaks essentially unaccented English. The older one has a heavy accent.
Although both are anti-communist, the younger one explains that it was harder for her to be anti-communist. She has fond memories of life in the USSR and the Soviet child indoctrination programs. In contrast, at the time they left, the older one had seen the toll communism took on their parents and had seen the limits of her educational and job prospects as a political outsider.
That dynamic is consistent with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vindman#Early_life_and_education
Jewish. Space. Lasers.
That’s what you all sound like. Any more young Eastern European women pressing close to you while they cut your hair might have you imagining even more of these dog whistle delusions and get you advocating insurrection. Maybe you’ll all join some new personality cult now that your former god Trump is out of office, disgraced, and finally cut off like he should have been six years ago. Just quitcherbitchen already; all you have to do is refrain from hate speech, refrain from hate being, say the new words, and UNITE as if Trump never happened. It’s all his fault. Denounce your conspiracy theories about ginned up collusion hoaxes and cancel culture, accept that he was a foreign stooge and that there were no election irregularities, admit your complicity in Proud Boy and Q hate. Then you’ll be free to partake of all that life has to offer. If not…..
/;P/
My comment here is obviously not sincere, yet as outlandish as it is I don’t actually think it’s an outlandish reply at all. If posted on Facebook it would be liked and expounded upon. Am I off on that speculation? Based on the last several interactions I had on Facebook I think I may be understating.
So what’s the plan, man? We just gonna murmur to each other about what’s happening? We gonna squabble about nobody GOP representatives (who likely see the same things as we and the Ukrainian hairdresser see) for nothing reasons at the behest of the people ushering in all of this evil? Are we gonna jump on the condemnation train against those who protested on 1/6? Are we going to aid the dissident hunt by accepting the premise that that was insurrection incited by President Trump, employing nuance and substance where none will be admitted? Geez, it’ll take a special kind of leader to step up to lead us out of this considering how such leaders have been treated even by those most disposed to acknowledging our situation.
Is she single and does she find herself strangely attracted to men who look like Uncle Fester from The Addams Family? Asking for “a friend”.
It didn’t make sense fifty years ago either. I don’t understand why people are puzzled at conservative anger. We’ve seen this coming, have tried to stop it, yet we are consistently made out to be the bad guys. Going back a long way. On purpose.
I know, maybe if we just stop being so extreme and make an appeal to the suburban moms…..
Thanks. I put their website on my social media pages.
We’ve been having DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) training at our company. Last week the consultant leading the series talked about her experience with a past participant expressing offense at the use of the word “female”. The response of the consultant was that she had “more learning to do”. She equated “female” with the use of the word “gay” to mean bogus or no good or however we meant it in the 80’s. Used to be done, but isn’t acceptable anymore. So I spoke up on this call with 50 participants: saying “female” in context of it’s actual meaning and as utterly non-demeaning is not the same as the evolution of the word gay. It was the end of the call so we couldn’t flesh it out, but the consultant ended by stating that no one is making me say anything. Silently I completed her sentence: “…yet”.
My blood runs cold alright. Has been running cold in earnest since the start of the Russia Collusion Hoax, and it’s only gotten icier since then. Masks have truly slipped and I can’t fool myself any longer. So now what?
I’ve been seeing increasing numbers of references to TikTok in the Internet realm I travel within. And when I run my debit card through the CVS credit card type pad, Alibaba flashes before my eyes.
I’m having nightmares lately that the Chinese are simply going to absorb us.
Andrew Breitbart had the right formula for combating the culture war. Make them answer for everything they say and do on their own terms. Don’t let any attack go unchallenged. Sound familiar? Was Andrew narcissistic and stupid too? Unable to let things go? Needlessly antagonistic? If Andrew had lived I suspect that his reputation wouldn’t have survived any more than Trump’s has. How easy it is to isolate and otherize, isn’t it?
I used to tell my high school students to study Chinese. That way they could get low level jobs in the ChiCom hiearchy when the ChiComs take over and provide some level of protection to their families.
Might work; however, if people think America is a racist country they have no idea what it will be like when the ChiComs take over. Then I suspect some people will learn the true meaning of systematic institutional racism.
My hair dresser is from Russia too – she is so sweet. She employs an older woman who speaks no English with flaming red hair who is from Belarus. The hairdresser, Maira, said her husband is still there, sends her money and has not been able to get out. Maira had a Christmas party for her female clients, pre-COVID, and one wall were all Russians and Ukrainian women. They all brought native food and Maira cooked Russian food for us. It was a blast. We did the steal the Santa and they were very competitive. What I learned is that there are many here and are glad to be here and not there. They all thought I was Russian, as did Maira when we met – blonde with the cheekbones and brown cat shaped eyes..I said yes I’m Ukrainian and Polish and they started speaking to me in the mother tongue – I said I don’t understand. They wagged their fingers and said you need to learn!
Now with the unrest in Moscow, I wonder what will happen……by the way, she is really fast too and does an exquisite job. Our last conversation was her daughter, a twenty something, was coming over to live with her.
So were my grandparents (never knew them) but my dad and aunt were Democrats. They would not be today if still alive.
Hey! Get in line, dude!
Wait. You mean I liked it and it was sarcasm? I’m good with that.
To Ed’s remark, this is what it is and will be like for anyone who tries to drain the swamp, especially an outsider. Trump was a strong person who did not care about what people thought. He wasn’t going to make friends. He cut out the swamp when necessary, although he tried to work with them, especially at first, until he saw it was a no-go. I don’t know too many possible candidates that can match that. However, since we are now in Obama 2.0, and the country will be totally transformed into The Great Reset by then, it may be more desirable to step into the ring and get support. The results of this current presidency will look like night and day a.k.a the dark winter…
I’ve mentioned this event before, but it’s relevant. I had a neighbor at Ft. Bragg (JAG officer, boo! hiss!) whose wife was Cuban. She had come over when she was about five and grew up in Boston, where she and the JAG officer (boo! hiss!) had been high school sweethearts.
Her cousin had only been in the US for about five years, and came down to visit her. My son and I met him for the first time just as we returned from the dojo and were hanging up our gi ‘s on our fence to dry out (The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Mongo had/has a very adamant “no wet, stinky gi in the house” rule). He came over and asked if we were judoka (judo players). Yes and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
As Judo guys are wont to do, we started discussing favorite throws and techniques, which as usually happens, ended up with demonstrations of said throws and techniques on the lawn. After more than an hour, we sat on the cul-de-sac curb re-hydrating and replenishing carbohydrates (i.e., drinking beer).
He stated something like, “Man, I love Judo. Now that I’m in the States, I do it every day, if I can.”
“Did you do Judo in Cuba.”
“No. No. I was very good at baseball, so the Communists made me play baseball. I wasn’t allowed to do Judo. Bastards.”
Indeed.
Welcome, @navyjag. And, uh, the guy that got all the boos and hisses above was an Army JAG. So, no harm no foul, right?
Confirm. The Austin Crepe Crazy excellent.
My father-in-law’s family came from the Ukraine in the 1920’s – his parents, brothers and sisters. My mother-in-law (Czech descent) was into genealogy and did a very nice family tree for Mrs. Tim and me. It goes back four generations. It’s complete for everyone except my FIL’s family. It’s blank. All records have been lost. I’m sure the records, and his family, were victims of the commies.
That story makes me goddamn proud.
To be an American. Like this couple.
What’s the current president doing to small businesses like this one?
Killing them.
Reminds me of the Tom Lehrer song:
“In both Russian and English I know how to count down,
und I’m learning Chinese”, says Werner Von Braun.