Introduction

I am starting this blog as a form of a politically incorrect diary for myself and for the people who care about what is happening in America as much as I do.

I am relatively new to America. I came here only 3 years ago. I was born in the USSR, I grew up in the USSR until I was 9 and then in the new fledgling country called Russia.

I cannot say that life was bad there, after all almost any adult will tell you that their fondest memories are of their childhood. I was happy there as a child, because I didn't know any other life. But as an inquisitive and thoughtful child I was always looking for answers to serious questions that most children don't even think about. I remember that as a child I saw justice as one of the major virtues. I was judging most events in my life based on that concept or what I then knew of it. I remember that I was always ready to act in defense of justice and was always upset when justice was violated. I particularly remember one episode from my elementary school. As often happens we had a bully in our classroom. He was really nasty to everybody, bullying both boys and girls and being a peeping Tom in the girls’ bathroom. I remember when this bully hurt my friend. I don't remember what exactly he did to her, but I know that I was mad. I simply pulled his hair until he was crying. Guess what? I was punished for establishing justice and that was one of my first lessons on difference of opinions on justice.

I remember that at one point I saw the Revolution of 1917 in Russia as just. I was a child then, I didn't know much about politics or economics but I was well read in whatever books were available to me at that time. Most books taught me that it was just to take from the rich and give to the poor because the lazy and spoiled rich were exploiting the hard-working and starving poor. I honestly believed in that and was ready to grow up as a good citizen in order devote my life to the state and the common good.

My world collapsed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 90’s were really bad years. Those who were stronger participated in carving up the industrial heritage of the Soviet Union and establishing themselves in the new and cruel world of Russian “business”. Stories about murdered businessmen were so numerous that people got used to them. Consequently, most people didn't want to venture into that world because they cared about staying alive. Many were still working for government plants and very often they were not paid for their work for several months in a row. People survived mostly with the help of their small gardens where they could grow some vegetables.

Even that was not as scary to me as the change in ideology. Everything that I had been taught was changing before my eyes. The same teachers who had taught me about Lenin and the Party a year before were now teaching me about the usurpation of power by the Bolsheviks and the martyrdom of the Tsar family. That was more than I could take because contrary to most other kids I was not aacepting information blindly, I was trying to analyze it before absorbing. I was not able to resolve my confusion but I definitely learned to think critically and verify information before trusting. Coincidentally I faced another injustice. I did my homework myself, I studied hard, I spent my time to prepare for the school and then at school I was surrounded by a bunch of my classmates who had neglected their work and now needed my help. They expected my help as if I owed it to them and if I refused they took it as a slight to them. I know that it often happens in school and my experience was not new in any way, but what I saw as a real problem was that the same attitude didn’t stop in school but went into the adult professional and personal lives.

I saw many other unjust things in my life too. My grandmother who had worked her entire life 6-7 days a week for 10-12 hours a day for the state in her kolkhoz and couldn't save any money for retirement, (because the amount of money that she was receiving at her work was barely enough to survive and the state was supposed to take care of you after your retirement), after her retirement was receiving a smaller pension from the state than her next door neighbor who spent her entire life avoiding work under the guise of numerous non-existent ailments. Those who were foolish enough to save money for retirement or for any other needs, depriving themselves of everything, like my other grandmother or my parents, were robbed of their money by the new Russian government. Almost overnight inflation swallowed everything they had. To make it clearer, imagine that today you have 100 000 dollars in your savings account, tomorrow you wake up and you have 100 dollars in your account.

Life was full of injustices. Yet Russians always went on, complaining, but eventually getting used to it. Poor health care, bad roads, horrible utilities, dirty streets were considered normal because they didn't know any better. Most people who knew better did their best to leave Russia. I realized that most problems that we had were inherited from the USSR and magnified in the new world of relative “freedom”. I saw the problems but I couldn't name them or their causes. Not until I accidentally came across one of the books of Ayn Rand. In her simple logical manner she answered all the questions that had been troubling me. I got the answers most of which I already knew somewhere deep in my mind. These were the answers that I knew as a child, but then was taught to think differently. I was finally able to grasp the concept of justice completely, the way it should be, instead of fairness the way I had been taught.

Life can give us unexpected gifts sometimes. It happened that Ayn Rand also introduced me to the United States. Thanks to her I met the love of my life and left Russia for America. I was going to see the world that Ayn Rand admired so much, the world of freedom and capitalism, the world of individual rights and justice....

Well, I was in for a disappointment. Of course, I was amazed how different the USA was compared to Russia. I saw wealth and prosperity where I was supposed to find "rotting capitalism" as they had taught me in Russia. Now I knew where wealth and prosperity came from and what I found was logical. But behind this beautiful facade I saw familiar themes. Behind this prosperous and happy world of citizens and private businesses I saw the same grinning specter of communism that I hoped I had left in Russia. I saw a world where people were taught by their government to live according to the motto "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs". I saw a world where people were taught to be their brother's keepers. A world where unconditional love to your neighbor and devoted service to the state became more important than justice. The only difference was that I had left Russia at the point when people were trying to cure themselves from that disease and I came to America at the point where people were getting sick from the same disease. I couldn't believe my eyes. America that had everything, America that had a great history of individual rights, America that had the history of fighting against socialism and collectivism, America that had the history of living according to real values was now in the process of losing everything. I was learning history almost from a clean slate because I realized that my knowledge of American history was very superficial and in many cases incorrect. I learned about the spirit of the Founding fathers and the philosophy that made the revolution possible, I learned about the gradual erosion that had been taking place over the last century and the cause of that erosion. Even then I was not ready to brace myself for the events that started unfolding after the election of the first black president of the USA apparently without regard to his other qualifications outside his skin color. I feel like I am on a roller-coaster ride to socialism. In a blink of an eye we have lost more in the last half a year than probably in the last 20 years. At that rate in three and a half more years there will be nothing left from the USA. We all will be living in the USSA (United Socialist States of America).

I guess that is the main reason why I decided to start my blog. I don't know how much I can do or how many people I can convince to fight for their lives. At least this blog will help me to put my thoughts in order and track the dizzing events that have been happening so rapidly, as well as their causes and effects.