Still not over the Cold War

Karl Marx welcoming the world to Fantasy Empire

Nov 2011
Still not over the Cold War
Hello Gentle Readers, I just landed in Russia. I have a short layover here at the Moscow International airport on my way to Singapore. I have never been here before but I am not technically here now. Let me explain. Unless you go thru Customs of a particular country, you really aren’t “in” that country. So, by that measure, I cannot claim I am in Russia. And by that measure it also means I have never been in France, China, Antarctica, or Mars.

I was sitting in a window seat as we neared Moscow. It was a bright sunshiny day, but oddly enough, no other passenger on the plane seemed to notice William Shatner, in a furry gremlin suit, out on the wing. I had a great view the countryside from low altitude as we made our approach to land. We were flying over a broad, flat rural region. It is a huge area. I don’t recall the unit of measure they use for land over here. Is it Hectares?,Voltaires? Éclairs?

Much of the area below me was a blend of forest and open farm land. There were a few lonely roads etched in to the landscape. I could see occasional smoke stacks that were busy spewing out dark gray plumes of smoke. The vapors created a long wispy line along the horizon as far as the eye could see. I guess this is what caused the thick layer of haze in the atmosphere that we flew thru as we came down land. Thank goodness I never see that kind of air pollution in the U.S. any longer, unless I am flying thru Washington D.C. airspace.

As I Looked down on the unplowed barren fields it was evident to me that the communist system just doesn’t work. No crops were growing and the grounds were empty. The Commies told us back in the 60’s they would bury us, but they can’t entice the farmers to produce food? Where were the collective farms that would allow proud farmers to feed the world? I guess profit motive for farmers may actually make them grow stuff. Or maybe there was nothing in the fields because it is mid-November? OK, I guess that could be it.

We landed. But I never saw ANY sign we were even close to Moscow. There were no small outlying communities that you’d normally see near the large central business areas. Where was that giant evil city that was the scourge of the free world during the cold war? Where was Red Square and the famous minarets of the Kremlin? Not to be seen. I have quickly adopted a theory that it was all just a giant illusion. Moscow, and the entire Soviet System was just a menacing cardboard cutout of power that the communists created just to fake out the west. I have learned to hate fakes. Like the fake Rolex watch I bought in Indonesia, or the fake heart transplant I had in Mexico City. (Not really. I am a Conservative. I don’t have a heart. ) History has shown, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, that communism did not work.The wall was more valuable when it was broken up in to chunks to sell to tourists.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see in the airport of the Capitol city of the former Soviet Union. Maybe I envisioned a chorus line Cossacks in furry hats doing a folk dance, or a KGB agent in a trench coat asking for my papers, or perhaps a vodka swilling bear eating peasants for the amusement of the tourists. As a side note, I’ve actually seen a performing bear in a rural area of India once. But it was not swilling vodka, it was not eating peasants, and it didn’t ask me for my papers. It was just a sad captive bear that had all its teeth pulled out and was working for tips and tips alone. Seeing this made me wish I had become that dentist I originally went to college to become. I’d grab the owner of that poor bear and pull his teeth out to see how he liked it. But, as usual, I digress.

I am a child of the 60’s who grew up under the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union. I remember the agony of practicing “duck and cover” drills in elementary school. It seemed we spent hours doing the drill. We’d be sitting on the floor, bent over with our hands over our heads “for protection”. I wondered why it was OK for the teachers and faculty to be walking around and chit-chatting while the students were cowering in the hallway. They always seemed to let the drill go on a little longer each time. And they appeared to enjoy it way more than they should have. Now, thinking back on it, I am suspicious of what was in the drinks I saw them toasting each other with. At the time, I didn’t think about why they would have had olives and tiny umbrellas in their beverages.

Looking back now, as a mature adult (OK, age-wise mature, not mentally), I realize that these drills were not to protect us physically from a Rooskie sneak attack. These drills were designed by our government to make us think we were doing something to protect ourselves. It was rather silly to believe that covering our heads with our hands would do any good if we were exposed to a 2000 degree blast wave from a thermo-nuclear device.

I am beginning to have my suspicions that our government knew all along that the commies were not a problem. Our leaders just used that threat to get billions of tax dollars out of us. Never let a crisis go to waste. I thought that was a new term, but the concept behind it is as old as politics. We now are accustomed to the U.S. government using our money to buy million dollar toilets. I wonder if those toilets had built-in bidets? But, in fairness, those high dollar commodes must have done the trick. It turns out that we were never bombed by the Commies, or attacked by dancing bears wearing trench coats. But the KGB does ask for our papers, now, at the airport.