The Black Mirror

For us, Obama is a Rorschach test framed in a black mirror. And glancing into the glass, we are delighted with the tonal values of our Russian society.

As anticipated, Barack Obama’s election has created quite a buzz around the world.

Inasmuch as nothing, up to now, other than his black skin, has distinguished the President from the political herd, we can only surmise that herein lies the impetus.

One of Us

Previously, I wrote that Obama’s success in the third world was as easy to account for as his triumph in white Europe. Obama is loved universally in the third world, because people in those countries couldn’t care less about political correctness. In the third world, people form opinions based on sensations, not ideas. And it’s not just black people, but yellow as well; everyone sees himself in Obama, because Obama is “non-white.” And in the third world, no white man – even if you turn his skin inside out – can be completely accepted as “one of us.”

What is more, these people hardly follow the finer points of politics. They overlook the fact that the president of the United States will conduct politics in the interest of his own country, and not in the interests of Kenya or Honduras.

Whatever the case, in their eyes he will remain our man in the White House. The third world will take a generous view of his politics. American policies will remain the same, but now they will be given the benefit of the doubt, rather than mistrusted. (Of course, nothing is for certain; for example, if the USA conjures up another war, then not even Obama’s skin will protect those on the ground from the bombs and the hatred).

Indeed, perceptions of American imperialism will die on the vine without the idea of racial superiority to nourish them. White people who would elect a black man as their president can hardly be perceived as arrogant, pith helmet-wearing, whip-cracking imperialists.

In the 1920’s, the Soviet poet Tikhonov expressed the essence of the relationship between imperialist and slave as follows:

Sami’s Sahib is good and wise,

But the whip is in his hand

Sahib is good, but in his eyes

Sami is not a man.

There can be no Sahib Obama. Sahib is dead. Long live Sahib!

As far as white Europeans are concerned, they sympathize with Obama out of political correctness. They are driven not by sensations, but by ideas.

But for all that, the heart of the matter it is still the question of skin color. You might say that skin color means as much to Obama’s career as it does to Naomi Campbell’s.

That same skin has played a bad joke on our society.

Our Answer to Obama

In the course of my comments, I almost failed to mention those who approve of Obama. After all, who could actually sympathize with the USA and their choice for president, except for perhaps a Russophobe or a paid agent of the CIA?

Obama’s election has had no effect on Russian relations with the USA. We’ve simply added a gripe to our list of grievances: next to “over there they lynch black people,” we have entered (without editing the previous entry!) “over there they elect Negroes for president!”

What Russian could sympathize with any black man (or for that matter any “non-white” man), who hasn’t gunned down an American, Israeli, or various citizen of a NATO country? The bulk of our society is not languishing from the symptoms of political correctness.

According to our folksy wisdom, Obama was chosen by the voices of the Blacks and Latinos, since a) they voted for “one of their own,” and b) together they form a majority in the United States. This quaint directness in handling the facts is charming. In Ostrovsky’s day, the chattering classes actually believed in the existence of people with dogs’ heads – and somehow we still do today.

But in this case, we may – with minimal effort – get on the internet and discover that African-Americans make up only about 12% of the voting population, and Whites, on the other hand, make up about 70%. We could learn that the vast majority of African-Americans always votes for Democratic candidates; that Obama won mostly because the votes of Blacks and Latinos were already in his pocket, but that the whites’ votes were split almost down the middle. In other words: just under half of whites voted for Obama.

Of course, none of this particularly interests us. Neither does it interest us much when vice-speaker of the National Duma Zhirinovsky explains on television that Obama is a Muslim. Zhirinovsky’s apparently intimate knowledge of the low-down on the Senator from Illinois is served up as evidence that, while Obama claims to be a Christian (United Church of Christ), you can’t fool the Orthodox nose of Vladimir Wolfovich Eidelstein (Zhirinovsky’s birth name).

And so the basic arguments boil down to:

a) Obama will deal a death-blow to America with his perestroika – just as Gorbachev did with the USSR;

b) while this is not only very pleasant for us, it is also to be expected, since Obama is a populist without any government experience; and

c) while it may be unseemly to say so directly, it is being hinted at that apparently the Americans have completely lost their marbles. That they would elect a Negro! Our famous talking head Vladimir Solovyev isn’t afraid to say it. He’s the type that says things like “of course, I’m no racist…” and then follows it with invective about how Obama’s election is a perfect example of the kind of unjust “reverse discrimination” that gets a populist into office. He’s never led anything, and then wham! Just because he’s black… And furthermore, show me the successful president of any developed country who is black. No, I’m not a racist…but HOW COULD THEY?!

As far as I can tell, all of these ideas are just as popular in our intemperate climate as “Obamamania” is in the decadent West, the dancing South, and the rising East.

Let’s see if we can’t figure out the sources of our “non-racism.”

I should point out, first of all, that although I am not a racist, I also don’t swoon from righteous indignation at the first hint of a racist argument. I, too, have been known to vocalize racist opinions – if only for the sake of context.

Given: you couldn’t bait a fish hook with the Senator’s experience. Sure, he has never headed a serious enterprise (a state, a town, or a company), and he was a senator for a mere four years; before that he was a member of the Illinois State Senate. Yes, he speaks flawlessly; but he never articulates anything substantial – such as a clear plan for dealing with the crisis. Sure, if he was white it is entirely possible that he wouldn’t have become the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party – where there is no shortage of silver tongues.

True enough. How true, as well, that before now, there has never been a black president of a large, affluent, white country. And the condition of Africa, with all its oil and diamonds, is monstrous; not least because of the venality of the criminal presidents of African countries.

Granted, there are several examples of Black know-how: nobody would call Secretary of State Rice weak; and former General and Secretary of State Powell is universally respected. Nevertheless, it is a fact that few of the higher offices in American and European government are occupied by Blacks.

But to what degree does this indicate the inability – let’s be frank – the biological inability of blacks to lead successfully? Of course, posing this sort of question in the USA would get you tarred and feathered (it would be a bipartisan effort – the liberals would tar, and the conservatives would feather). Likewise, even in Russia nobody but a skinhead (or possibly Zhirinovsky) would dare to pose the question so bluntly. But it doesn’t matter what people say; what matters is how they think and feel.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. First, in principle.

African Races of the Finest Sort

Let us examine the eternal, principally improper and politically incorrect theme: which nation is “good at” what?

The Western European nations – the English, French, Germans, etc. – not to mention the Romans and Greeks – have established the criteria of success in everything from philosophy to business, from art to politics. But how objective are these criteria? Whatever the arena of competition, be it political, military, economic, or scientific, these nations have absolutely dominated the rest of the globe. As far as art and philosophy are concerned, there can be no victory, since each nation establishes its own criteria; but Western art naturally exerts more international influence than Eastern art.

To the “high Western European model” – in addition to the Western Europeans themselves, and those of their people living in the USA – belong a few nations of Eastern Europe: Russians, Poles, and also the Jews dispersed throughout Europe and America. That’s if we’re talking about the “sport of high achievement” – about prominent scientists, writers, political leaders, etc. As far as the nations of the third world go (and partially of Eastern Europe – the Baltic States, Romania, the Ukraine, etc.) – who could reasonably put forward a legitimate contender to the world’s “racial vanity fair?” On their best day, their national champions in the categories of science, art, and politics have never reached the top step of the international victory stand.

The same, by the way, applies in the arena of ethnic competition within the USA itself. Even there, within science, business, politics, literature, and art, the leading positions are occupied by representatives of the Western European nations – Anglo-Saxons, Scots, Jews, Irish, Germans, Italians, etc. But Africans – other than in sports and certain kinds of music – cannot boast any sort of higher achievement. For that matter, for every 100,000 murders, Blacks account for more than 7 (seven!) times as many as whites. Even though Blacks, as I have said, are only 12% of the population, the number of Blacks and Whites convicted of murder is roughly equal.

But what does all of this mean?

The liberal, politically correct doctrine has not changed in the last 200 years: all people, of every nation, are the same. It is the “influence of the environment” that creates inequality. Dostoyevsky found this amusing: “A man of forty violates a child of ten; was it environment drove him to it?”

I consider such a doctrine to be an obvious lie and stupidity. Sure, social conditions are exceptionally important; it is more difficult for a boy from the Bronx to get into Harvard than for a boy from Manhattan. But national differences leave no room for doubt: national mentalities are just as different as languages, appearance, habits, sayings, and so forth.

However, it is a great blunder – a criminal blunder – to divide nations into “right” and “wrong.” It’s the same sort of nonsense as segregating languages into “right” and “wrong.” Regarding languages, you can only say that they are different, and variously prevalent.

It is even more idiotic to transfer various characteristics of a nation onto individuals.

Below are three of the most flagrant fallacies.

The Vanity Fallacy: to ascribe to oneself any achievement of one’s nation. The average Jew is not a co-author of Einstein; the average Russian cannot sing like Hvorostovsky; and not every black man can kick the ball like Pele.

The Belligerence Fallacy: to feel one’s own nationality superior to others. This fallacy is a result of the Vanity fallacy.

And lastly, the Criminal Fallacy: carrying the Belligerence fallacy over into the legal code, and demanding privileges for your own nation (or limits on others).

The unconditional legal and moral equality of all nations is a demand that is explained easily. Since nations cannot be divided “by sort,” they must be equal – and so must all people. Today, this equality has been effectively accomplished. And if in previous centuries the debate was about granting rights, then today the question is about removing existing equality. But removing equality comes at a bloody price, and one might successfully extract blood without extracting any rights.

And so, we are consigned to complete equality. The cat is out of the bag.

Which begs the question of why Blacks have never ruled white countries. And the answer is: so what? Everything has to start sometime. There is no reason to believe that it won’t come out roses for them.

Today in Europe and the USA the races fight fire with fire. There is still discrimination against black people, but it is often combated not with equality, but with discrimination against Whites; specifically, with inequitable competitive preferences for Blacks. It is an inevitable, retaliatory distortion. Of course Obama got where he is today by using his race as public relations capital. Why wouldn’t he? Only a fool would turn that down; and he is no fool. He used it, and he won. But that does not indicate that he will be a weak president. On the contrary…

Our Racism

And now, let’s examine our own spots.

National sentiment, it seems to me, has its proper use. But nationalism in the chauvinistic sense is the last cave to which our inner club-dragging Neanderthal may crawl to take refuge from reason, of which it wants no part. We all harbor our nationalistic troglodyte; educated and illiterate, young and old, rich and poor, large nations and small, the oppressed and the oppressors (and the common nation falls into both categories simultaneously). But while in each person there resides a Neanderthal of varying woolliness, not everyone is ashamed of its presence.

Forty years ago in the USA there were a number of blatantly racist laws forbidding marriages between Blacks and Whites. Laws like this would have been inconceivable in the Soviet Union. In fact, it is difficult even to think of an analogous situation, outside of the Third Reich.

But the Americans battled racism, and they overcame. Obama’s election is their V-Day parade. Yet we (not all of us, but many) are meeting this election with a contemptuous smirk, or even with an openly racist implication. In fact – unlike Europe – we don’t blush at converting the implication into an outright accusation (a la Zhirinovsky or Solovyev).

But can you even imagine that Russians would elect a Georgian – a real Georgian with a non-Russian name and face? Not even in my wildest dreams. Is that not the root of our practical sort of racism – our need to justify our astonishment at the election of a Negro?

Anti-Americanism is, generally speaking, not the favored pastime of geniuses. For example, where did we get the idea that supposedly Obama will bring down the USA, just as Gorbachev did the USSR? Is it because we would love for that to happen?

What can we make of that claim? In the USA, there is no nationalistic-territorial movement that wants to secede from the rest of the country. There is no deficit of goods and services. There is no political powder keg waiting to explode and bring down the country with it. So what could cause their downfall?

Clearly, America’s influence in the world will decline, albeit not in a landslide. The unipolar world is gone. But despite all of this, America will remain the most powerful country in the world in military, economic, technological, and scientific terms.

Using this circumstance as occasion to create illusions – to convince oneself of the decline and fall of America – is just as ridiculous and dangerous as deciding that, since they elected a black man, the Yanks have lost their marbles.

Our reaction to the election of Obama is typical. It’s not a question of Obama, as such. Looking into the “black mirror,” we see not the mirror, but ourselves.

And not everything in that image, in my opinion, is picturesque.