It’s the Fourth of July again, 2022. My son called me to wish me a happy holiday. He has moved away, and I am grateful that he takes the time to stay in touch. He has told me before how standing among fellow Americans, listening to the national anthem with his hand on his heart sends shivers down his spine.
He is American born; I am not.
Even for people born here the experience can be different as well. I have heard Frederick Douglas’ famous speech about the Fourth of July celebration read by James Earl Jones. Frederick Douglas was born a slave and made that speech in 1852 in Rochester, NY to an audience of well-intentioned Whites. He does not hesitate to accuse them of monumental hypocrisy. “Your blessings” he tells them – “justice, liberty, prosperity, independence – are not shared by me… While you may rejoice, I must mourn.”
My origin is European, so I was not born to the fate of slavery. It’s just that I came to the United States in my mid-twenties, and other experiences entered my makeup first. My parents were born in Russia but fled to Yugoslavia in 1920 to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. I was born in Yugoslavia in 1938. We were swept up in the turmoil of World War II and ended up in a Forced Labor Camp in Germany. During that first year before the war was over, we barely survived. The next four years were spent in refugee camps managed by a United Nations agency.
It was in this situation of hardship and vulnerability in the “Displaced Persons” camps that a special experience of “Russian identity” took its roots. My family’s friends were a close-knit group of Russians. They would get together and sing beautiful, nostalgic songs about their lost homeland. They would organize cultural events: I was taught Russian folk dances and made to recite patriotic poems. And when such events would be introduced by a soulful singing of the pre-revolutionary anthem “God save the Tsar,” I experienced the emotional and physical symptoms described by my son when he sings “God bless America.
Now my life takes its course in America, and I am growing old in it. Strange to say, however, when I heard a recorded version of “God save the Tsar” not long ago, I experienced the same “goose bumps” first experienced in childhood. It’s not as if I understood then or share now my parents’ feelings about old Russia.
Here the work of George Lakoff, who takes us into the intricacies of cognitive processes can offer some insights. He explains how ideas, particularly ideas encountered in our childhood environment while our brain is actively developing, become physically embedded in our neural networks. In time they take the form of cognitive frames, narratives, metaphors, metonymies, etc. which we use without realizing their origins. In short, these linguistic frames create an essentially UNCONSCIOUS world view.
How can it be that the convictions we live by – and elect our political representatives – is the product of unconscious processes? And what about the emotional undertow which may be reinforced by repeated “frames” and “narratives” – as we experience watching or listening to news programs? So, should we strive to outgrow our emotions and practice the rigors of logical thinking? Or could that result in rationalizing our emotions?
These dilemmas came up in my conversation with my son – in this case, about the events in Ukraine. He knows that my mom was born in Ukraine and that my dad was born in Russia. As it happens, my family spoke Russian, and I don’t remember any tensions or conflicts about this. But this does not mean that Ukraine does not have a complicated history. The word “Ukraine” literally means borderland, which has caused the territory to be a perennial battleground of contending powers. First, there were waves upon waves of invasion from the Asian steppes, which resulted in the sacking of Kiev (Kyiv) by the Mongols in 1241. Later the river Dnieper (Dnipro) was a tentative border between the newly forming states of Orthodox Russia and Catholic Poland. Later still, during World War II, Ukraine became one of the “bloodlands” between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
“Ok Mom, my son said politely, thanks for the history. But what does that have to do with Putin invading Ukraine right now?” As Nancy Pelosi put it, “all roads lead to Putin.” My son is busy with his own life, why should he not rely on Nancy Pelosi and President Biden, and all the nice smiley faces on TV? I experienced a telling example of this attitude when I went to a local meeting in Tucson about the sway of “dark money” – a perfectly respectable liberal position. But the headline of the flyers they distributed took me aback. It said in bold letters: “How Would You Like Putin to control the election of the next governor of Arizona?”
Maybe I still carry inside me some of those sad Russian melodies I heard in my childhood, and they strike a false note in the overwhelming chorus on “mainstream media.” But this has also motivated me to do historical homework.
I proceeded to share this homework with my friends. I brought up the advance of NATO to the borders of the Russian Federation; I questioned the presence of Victoria Nuland’s on the square of Maidan in 2014 and her role in the subsequent regime change in Kiev (Kyiv); I reminded them that the Russian-speaking Donbass region had refused to accept the rigged regime in Kiev and was mercilessly shelled by it for the next eight years; I brought up that there had been agreements negotiated in Minsk to accommodate the Donbass position which were ignored by the Kyiv regime; I reminded them that the Russian government had repeatedly and officially stated that the intention to incorporate Ukraine into NATO was an existential threat to them – and that they viewed the continued arming of Ukraine as the creation of a de facto NATO on their border.
But my addressing my erstwhile liberal friends in this way proved fruitless: they accused me of Putinism and went to peace demonstrations waving Ukrainian flags. Is George Lakoff right that we were both captive of opposing neural frames? George Lakoff is right, at least, that “logical argument” is powerless against the flood of emotional stimulation. But I too feel for the suffering of Ukrainians – but for the forgotten Ukrainians of the Donbass region as well as all the others. After all, I’ve known war myself, and my mom was Ukrainian. But circumstances had forced me to supplement and correct early conditioning while my American friends seemed utterly captured by the drumbeat of the “narrative” known as “Russiagate.”
So where do I even begin to tell my son the actual conclusion of all my reflections? That Ukraine, once again, is the battleground of contending forces, this time between Russia and the United States. REALLY? Did the Soviets not finally acknowledge the error of their ways and become happy Capitalists? Looked that way for a while. But eager Yeltsin was replaced by hardnosed Putin. He wanted Russia to get its fair share of the international run on its many natural resources, especially oil. Iranian Mossadegh had done the same back in the 50s, and endless turmoil ensued – to this day. Now it’s Russia’s turn, with the encirclement by NATO and anti-Russian regime change in Ukraine, and all the sanctions. Surely Putin remembers what happened to Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein and Muammar Khadafi – and all the South and Central American upstarts?
Apparently, Putin does remember, and decided to strike first in Ukraine. My explanations were met by a long silence on my son’s end of the exchange. I imagined him struggling to integrate a bunch of contradictory claims upon what we try to call “truth.” After all, our brain is not done growing until the mid-twenties – and who knows, maybe never stops reshuffling its inputs when challenged to do so?
But I figured I had challenged him enough and did not want to spoil his plans to join his friends to celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks. Was it fair, as Fredrick Douglass had stated, to call it an exercise in hypocrisy? But then again, did the bloody Civil War not confirm Fredrick Douglass’ warnings? The Southern planters had enjoyed their privileges thanks to the slave labor of Africans. Just like them, do we not enjoy our privileges thanks to the exploitation of the Global South? Do we not insist that NATO is to guarantee the “rules-based order” we claim it our privilege and duty to impose?
But are we not provoking a global civil war in doing so? Is the war in Ukraine not its first testing ground the way the Spanish Civil War was for World War II? Will all those Fourth of July fireworks turn into a world conflagration? This is not what my Ukrainian mother and Russian father wished for Ukraine, and this is not what I wish for my American children and grandchildren. My wish and hope is that the Fourth of July celebration reflects its original rebellion against British domination – by rebelling against the domination, the indoctrination, the utter hubris of the rich and powerful and well-armed who love to pull our strings.
Rise and Shine: Galina DeRoeck's Website 