Russian Bear:
Thank you for correcting my thoughtcrime and telling me how to think properly. Of course, moving to America and buying a nice used car are sufficient reasons to have my memory erased and forget why for 70 years generations of Soviets lived as slaves in misery and oppression, bamboozled by a collectivist ideology. It can never happen again in another country, can it?
And thank you for finally explaining to me what being an American means. On my own, I would’ve never guessed that to be an American means to just stop thinking, enjoy material comfort, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who knows what’s best for all of us.
Your kind patronizing words leave no doubt that the American Dream means to trust our lives to a benevolent charismatic leader who will save us from the dangers of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I didn’t see it in the Constitution myself, but I feel I can trust you because you sounded so condescending.
Too bad Putin is not on the ballot. In lieu of Vladimir, Obama is America’s next best choice, promising the American people a smorgasbord of entitlements. Funny that you didn’t even mention Hillary as an option. Who’s Hillary? Never heard of this non-person. The Party has spoken: she never existed. Purged for the Greater Good, even before the California primary.
Why can’t I just sit back and relax? Life would be so easier if I could stop seeing the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, good and evil. Everything should be equal – wasn’t that the thinking behind the creation of this country?
But I’m not the only ex-Soviet in America who has trouble relaxing. Before me there was an immigrant named Ayn Rand, who in spite of owning a nice car, continued to look for the meaning of American freedoms. And she deduced that freedom of speech included the freedom to disagree and not to support one’s own antagonists.
What freedom of speech didn’t mean, she wrote, was that private citizens must “provide a microphone for the man who advocates their destruction, or a passkey for the burglar who seeks to rob them, or a knife for the murderer who wants to cut their throats.”
Why couldn’t she just shut up and get used to the twilight morality that you take for “democratic life style?” Perhaps because like me, as you so shrewdly pointed out, she was afraid that if she didn’t write all that, the government would take away her car.
