Vladimir Golstein

 

An Open Letter From The Heart Bleeding American Liberals to the People of Ukraine and Russia.

Dear Ukrainians. We stand by you and sympathise with you. To be honest, we never really experienced invasion, so we don't really know how it feels, but we imagine it is very bad.

Of course, we ourselves have invaded at least twenty three countries, but we've never asked the populations of these countries how it feels. We should have, but we didn't. For a simple reason as to who cares what these bad guys feel. All those Iraqis, Serbs, Koreans, or Japanese. They were bad and they deserved what was coming for them. So we didn't ask.

Nor did we ask Russians how it feels to be invaded and lose 27 million of your people. Russians always suffer one way or another, and we are a bit tired of listening to the stories of their sufferings.

In any case, we fully sympathize with you, dear Ukrainians, and if you ever decide to join the millions of the refugees that we've created all over the world as the result of our twenty three invasions, we'll welcome you to their midst. We'll send you some blankets and toilet paper, and other stuff necessary for the peaceful transition from being a refuge to being a toilet cleaner somewhere in Germany. Here we are the true experts. We create refugees and we organize the world to help them. You'll be in good hands.

But our main message is to the Russian people. Please, do not invade. We've been there and we've done that. And it feels awful. The world hates you, the world fails to understand what you are trying to do, be it spreading democracy or freedom. Yet, all these fake news outlets immediately begin to assert that we are pushing the agenda of the military industrial complex. Don't they read the NYT? It explains everything, again and again. Yet, the world complains.

And as the heart bleeding liberals, we all get conflicted. Of course, NYT's explanations are good, but what if... You can't imagine how difficult it is to explain US policy to anyone not reached by the NYT.

So that will be your fate from now on, dear Russians. You'll mumble something about the need for security and cooperation, but the world will scream that you are planning to take Warsaw and Vilnius. You'll publish articles defending your vision of prosperity and friendship, and the world will mock it as Kremlin propaganda. You'll end up suppressing alternative sources of information, exactly as we are doing now by deplatforming all of your media outlets, but we truly feel bad about doing it. Back in school we studied that censorship is bad. So we are conflicted again. Do you want to be conflicted?

In other words, please, do not invade. Just wait a bit, maybe our government will decide to invade on your behalf. Like you rushed to invade Afghanistan. Why? You could have waited for a few years and we would have done it for you.

And finally, don't wait for too long to withdraw. We still didn't withdraw from Germany or Japan. We are spending so much money on our bases there. Our soldiers misbehave. We feel bad about these prolonged invasions. So please, be quick and get out as soon as possible. Maybe in reward, we'll plead with our government, and your cats will be reintroduced into the world cat association. That will be our gift to you for changing your ways. Peace, brothers! Sorry, can't go on further; time to take another puff of weed and listen to the latest report from BBC about your spectacular atrocities

Another one to emigres, refugees, legal and illegal aliens

Dear Fellow Emigres, Refugees, Legal and Illegal Aliens.

You all want to start from the scratch in the brave western world. Before you do, let me share some words of wisdom with you. The words coming from the forty three year of experience of being an emigre and refugee.

1. There is no corrupt, myopic or stupid politician in the west, who does not end up being replaced by even more corrupt, stupid, and dumb one.

2. There is no scientific or technological advancement ever created by the west, that hadn't been put to the destructive, exploitative, and inhumane use.

3. There is no creative work by an artist or thinker that won't be perverted and commodified by the west.

4. There is no lie, BS, propaganda, or vicious and cynical smear that you would here about your own country or any other country that you know intimately, that won't be turned into even more vicious, cynical and outrageous lie in the future.

5. There is no outrage, abuse or exploitation that your own country ever invented that won't be utilized or put to even more outrageous use by the west.

6. There is not a single crook or corrupt leader of your own country who won't find refuge in the west long before you, waiting patiently for your visa by the gates of some Western embassy.

7. If you intend to rely on your abused status of hated minority when you come to the west, don't bet on it. The children of your abusers, all those nazis, nazi collaborators, part-apparatchiks, racists, homophobes, antisemites and so on, are already in the west, claiming special status for being the victims of racism, nazism, communism, and so on.

8. And if you succeed on the west, be ready to turn on your own people, as you attend some power luncheon in honor of democracy and human rights with the scions of those corrupt leaders who've turned your own country into a refugee producing shithole.

Vladimir Golstein is Associate Professor of Slavic Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Lermontov's Narratives of Heroism (1999), Svetlana Aleksievich –The voice of Soviet Intelligentsia (2015) and numerous articles on major Russian authors. He was born in Moscow, where he studied mathematics and computers before emigrating to the US in 1979. He has degrees from Columbia and Yale Universities. Vladimir frequently discusses Russian politics at RT’s CrossTalk, CCTV’s The Heat, and PressTV. His articles on current political affairs have been published by Forbes, The Nation, Al Jazeera, RT, Antiwar, and Alternet.
See also https://www.vladimirgolstein.com/

After reading it, me: 

"Some say you'll crazy and some say you aren't.

You choose."