Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

When I was a kid, once or twice I asked my mother and grandparents why the Americans wanted to nuke us. The answer they gave was unusual. Americans, they said, had never been invaded or had a real war on their territory. (This was factually incorrect, of course, because of the War between the States, but let’s let that slide.) They didn’t know what war was like. Their sin was ignorance. But as far as I could tell, the reality was far more frightening. Presumably, I thought, Americans were so bored with their lives, so satiated with their decaying bourgeois culture, so fat, so selfish from their capitalism (nonsense, all of it, but I believed it; and who wouldn’t at the age of 6, being surrounded by it?) that they actually wanted to experience what war was like. They wanted a first-hand experience of using destructive power and perhaps nihilistic enjoyment of killing and devastating. This was taken by me as just another sign of America’s deepest perversity and evil. How could these cold, unsympathetic, malicious alien beings be capable of such hatred for me, a child, who had done nothing to them?

Of course, now at 30 and as a US citizen I can only contemplate the depth of my error of attributing such qualities to my countrymen. But that Americans don’t know what war is like is true. This causes them to overlook or underestimate its horrors in their imaginations. Now wait a minute, you will object — you, Dmitry, has also never fought in a war. What gives you the right to pronounce judgment over us?

My reply is that my whole childhood was suffused with the understanding of the tragedy that was the Second World War through my family’s experiences in it (e.g., by the end of the war my grandfather served as captain in Army intelligence), as well as through the Russian exceptionalism and nationalism which were generally inculcated. (Mother Russia, the idea was, a good, righteous, cheerful woman who will welcome you with open arms, with nary a wicked thought in her head, was raped by the damned Germans.) And war was not the only tragedy. The horrors of Stalin’s rule were rather well-known at the time, even by me, and those were yet another heartbreak. Because my mother’s side of the family was Jewish, stupid anti-Semitism, too, was tragic and beyond comprehension for me. And everyone felt that there was something wrong with socialism, some kind of masochistic self-hatred and dull despair involved in this monstrous ideology. Most could not put their finger on what was wrong; I do not believe that economics was taught in any institution of learning, but everyone knew when I was growing up that our country was cursed.

At this point you may ask whether my opposition to war stems merely from these childhood experiences. Of course, it does not. I believe (1) that most kinds of war are absurd, and (2) that most of the actual wars made no sense and benefitted neither the victors nor the losers, a phenomenon Mises (with Hegel) called “the futility of victory,” for reasons which have nothing to do with my early years. The purpose of my bringing them up was to show that even second-hand war experiences are often enough to inoculate one against automatically cheering for wars.

Be that as it may, I think that for a long time now Americans have been going on on one thing only: their tradition of liberty. I don’t believe that we have this tradition anymore. I wrote that we had crossed an invisible threshold by starting the war with Iraq, a threshold beyond which there is little chance of going back to goodness. In domestic politics I sense no hope whatsoever. So, as far as I am concerned, Americans are cursed, as well. Maybe Ron Paul can get elected and slowly drag us back into the light, to which end I offer this prayer:

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
       according to your unfailing love;
       according to your great compassion
       blot out my transgressions.

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
       and done what is evil in your sight,
       so that you are proved right when you speak
       and justified when you judge.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
       wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
       let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
       and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me from your presence
       or take your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
       and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
       and sinners will turn back to you.

14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
       the God who saves me,
       and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. (Ps 51:1-14)

Update: To illustrate my point, here is Walter Block and Max Raskin on the murderous neo-cons.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 2:17 am and is filed under Liberty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.