Longing and Sincerity on Either Side of Greenland

Certain moments among my days, throughout the weeks past I have paused for more than a sentimental minute on the Russian-soaked, salty longitudes of a former land. And it's not just fleeting sighing at the absence of the Sevastopol sea wall, or the strange longing for the stale stenches of vodka and sweat on a crowded bus.

There are those on this side of Greenland who are all together quite American in the way they express their opinions, and now my knee leaps with impatience. The Slavs know no phrase such as "passive aggressiveness." All things former-Soviet are either passive or aggressive, but not both. They speak their mind, and albeit it brutally insulting, are forthright in their communication.

America somehow imagined saddling a chimera with the head of an eagle and body of a mouse. We say rarely exactly what we mean, and the desires and thoughts inside us fester and boil until we are old, sick and in visible full-blown life crises or hidden depression. The politics of work and friendship are so often resigned to behind the scenes games of intrigue and poison. In such atmosphere it is not hard to see how once can so long for the emotional knife-fight of a Slavic disagreement on the coal dusted streets of Donetsk, rather than to endure one more day of incremental back injury by a billion paper cuts of Anglo-Saxon propriety.

Washington is easily one of the most polite metropolises on the Globe. No where else in the world will so many excuse themselves of affront. The rituals do serve us in so much that they prevent sharp elbows and pushing prevalent on mass transit in other corners to devolve into some facility of our handguns (a novel subject in the District). But I counter that drenching in all situations that absurd gentility is not always self-serving.

And then you have those who, with respects to gentility, are extraordinarily Russian in their discourse, like Representative Joe Wilson.

On a different note, I read in the New York Times recently that President Dmitry Medvedev indicated that he would like to see less glorification of Stalin and Stalinism in Russia.

For whatever controversial circumstance or cultural substance, order and justice are prioritized differently in different parts of the world. It just so happens here on this side of the Atlantic, ostensibly we place justice on a higher dias than order.

Having witnessed in parades glossy-eyed young, middle-aged and elderly rank-and-file holding high in reverence, gold-framed portraits of a Georgian Butcher in sunny Saturday patriotic parades, one can say that at least the demons of one nation's past walk un-masked in the streets; not cloaked in mystery, quiet, unnoticed, sneaking through the backwoods of South Carolina.

See article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31russia.html?_r=1&ref=world