Posted on by rjonakait

Putin, America, and the Politics of Being

          The Trump administration is trying to coerce Ukraine into accepting a peace settlement with Russia even though Russia may not want peace. The deal would basically have Ukraine capitulate to Putin. This reminds me of the books The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) by Timothy Snyder and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012) by Masha Gessen. Both books were written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and our 2020 and 2024 elections, but the two books complement each other in their portraits of Putin and Russia. They present pictures that aid in understanding the present Ukraine situation and illuminate for me aspects of our own politics. Reading them did not lead to a full-blown depression, but it did not improve my mood.

          Putin’s obsession with Ukraine is longstanding. The Soviet Union, founded in 1922, was a federation of national republics that included Ukraine. However, during the 1970s and 1980s every Soviet Republic increasingly felt as though they were being exploited by some other republic. In March 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR, organized a referendum on whether to maintain the Soviet Union as a single entity. Voters in nine of the fifteen constituent republics voted in favor of unity, but six republics boycotted the vote. A few weeks later, Georgia held its own referendum and voted to secede from the USSR. Two months later, Ukraine declared its independence from the USSR, as did Chechnya, which had been part of Russia. The latter led to a destructive war with Russia. (In August 1991, President George H.W. Bush went to Kyiv and urged Ukrainians not to leave the Soviet Union, saying “Freedom is not the same as independence.”) More than 90% of the Ukrainians voted for independence.       A coup to remove Gorbachev failed, but in the aftermath, Gorbachev resigned and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, became increasingly popular. He was soon head of the Soviet Union and removed Russia from the USSR ending the federation. Putin followed him as president of Russia in 1999. After a brief hiatus (2008-2012), Putin has been elected president ever since.

          Putin proclaims religious, ethnic, and near mythical connections between Russia and Ukraine. Snyder says Putin sees Ukraine as “an inseparable organ of the virginal Russian body” and that Putin has said that Russians and Ukrainians “are one people.” The independent Ukraine that came into being in 1991 may have been tolerable to Putin as long as it remained receptive to Russia’s desires and provided it with oil, food and precious metals. Viktor Yanukovych was elected head of Ukraine in 2010 and, according to Snyder, began his term “by offering Russia essentially everything that Ukraine could give, including basing rights for the Russian navy on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.” At the time it was understood that this installation would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

          The Ukrainian population, however, increasingly looked not to Russia for guidance and inspiration but to the West. When Yanukovych canceled an association agreement with the European Union in 2013, pro-European demonstrations broke out in Ukraine. After several elections, the present government took power, and as we all know, this is not a Ukraine that takes orders from Moscow.

          The westward turn by Ukraine has been especially troubling for those who have “Mother Russia” feelings about Ukraine. While former Soviet satellite countries and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007, the EU had not extended into any territory that had been part of the original Soviet federation of 1922.

          This history and Putin’s viewpoints about Ukraine struck me as quintessentially Russian. The first time I read in Crime and Punishment about Raskolnikov’s kissing the soil at the crossroads, I tried to understand his semi-mystical feeling for Mother Russia. Snyder writes that Russian slavophiles believe “that Russia was endowed with a particular genius. Orthodox Christianity and popular mysticism, they maintained, expressed a depth of spirit unknown in the West. The slavophiles imagined that Russian history had begun with a Christian conversion in Kyiv a thousand years before.”

          But as I thought about these aspects of Russian culture, I wondered whether there were counterparts in American history. Putin apparently believes that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia, and it is Russia’s destiny to include Ukraine. How much different is that from the nineteenth century American faith in “manifest destiny”? At the time, many felt that it was the express mission of Americans to push onward to the Pacific even though other peoples already lived there. Didn’t the use of the word “destiny” imply that this path was preordained by the Almighty? Putin and others believe that Russia is exceptional, distinct and more holy than other lands. And Americans? Of course, America is exceptional, and just below the surface of that notion is a kind of religious belief. Surely when Jesus returns, he will not go to Galilee, but instead will come to the holiest of holies, America. (That is, if he can navigate our immigration laws, for nothing in them would allow him to enter. He might be able to walk over the river, but what if a border wall keeps him out, and he is consigned to a squalid camp on the Mexican side?)

          Perhaps finding links between Mother Russia, manifest destiny, and American exceptionalism is a stretch, but comparing some aspects of recent Russian and American political history is not.

(Concluded April 30)

Posted on by rjonakait

A Place to Die

We have recently returned from Florida where we were looking look for a place to die. Of course, that is not the express purpose of the institutions — sorry, communities — that we visited. As the spouse explained after a similar trip last year, (See post of September 19, 2023 “Please Take Good Care of…Me”), they are called “continuing care retirement communities” or CCRCs. Here’s some of what she wrote:

“These popular retirement options (increasingly known as “life care communities” or “senior living solutions” [who thought up such an awful term?!?!?] ) are designed to make your last years on earth as pleasant and carefree as possible. Towards that end, they promise independent living in a comfortable apartment (or free-standing “cottage” or “villa” or “townhome”), meal service (usually one meal a day), housekeeping, a fitness center (machines and pools), day trips, art workshops, chapel, library (either check-out or book swap), book clubs, bridge, mah-jongg, musical events, etc. etc. etc. (God forbid you should just want to relax and read your book.) Importantly, the best ones offer “assisted living” should daily activities (like bathing and dressing) get to be overwhelming, memory care should dementia raise its ugly head, and skilled nursing should such be required. For all this fun one usually pays an entrance fee (higher the bigger the dwelling you select) and a monthly fee. The monthly fee may remain constant as one moves from, say, independent living to memory care, or it may start off small-ish (never really small) and get steeper as one moves to more hands-on levels of care.

“Now. There are several problems with all CCRC’s. While they offer some welcome activities to those of us who no longer get up in the morning to go to work, they also tend to remind us that we no longer get up in the morning to go to work, and we need other things to keep us engaged with the living. Moreover, it requires us to come to terms with the fact that bad things happen when one gets older. But the main problem with all of these CCRCs is that everyone, I mean everyone, is OLD. Some of us old people don’t like the idea of always being around old people. I know, I know, but there it is.”

So, we went to Florida not just to look at life plan communities, but to check out Florida itself. The spouse and I had felt that we had understood the good and the bad about Florida. She had spent formative time there, including her junior and senior high school years. The spouse worked there after graduate school. Her mother continued to live there after her father died. My parents moved there from Wisconsin after my father’s heart attack. I volunteered in a public defenders’ office on the west coast. However, now we were no longer so sure that we understood Florida. It had gone bonkers, banning books and rejecting abortion rights. We were particularly concerned about what seemed to be attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Would the gay, transgender, and nonbinary members of our families feel comfortable visiting us? Would we feel that we could find a comfortable community in this atmosphere? So we took our son along for a read on the place.

The first leg of our journey to find a place to die started with a hired car to take us to the airport. Our Uber driver—surprise, surprise—was an immigrant. He had come from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He talked about Georgian restaurants in New York City. He also said that driving for Uber could become boring. But it was only a part-time gig. He also worked for a family business. His father owns a sixty-acre vineyard in Georgia, and our driver was helping to set up a business to import the wines into the United States. We talked about varietals and the name of the family wines. His English was nearly perfect even though he had been in the U.S. only for eighteen months. His mother had taught him, he said. She had gone to veterinary school at the University of Florida.  

Although we had often driven ourselves to the airport, being driven meant that we saw things we hadn’t noticed before. In one short stretch there were three billboards extolling the services of various personal injury attorneys and one reminding us that Jesus saved. I wondered if you had Jesus in your life whether you would have the need for a PI lawyer. In Florida even more attorneys advertised. Indeed, car accident victims are more numerous than in New York City.

On the last leg of our trip to find a place to die, we used Lyft to take us from the airport back home. The spouse asked the driver why he drove for Lyft and not Uber. He said that he drove for both but preferred Lyft. Uber customers, he said, were more obnoxious than Lyft ones.  He–surprise, surprise—was an immigrant. He was born in Jamaica but had been in New York for nine years. He was married with two sons, nine and four, and was looking to buy a house on Long Island. His driving was also part time. He had a computer science degree and had a retinue of clients he helped with their technology issues. His real passion, however, was soccer. He had played professionally in England in one of the lesser leagues with a team hoping to work its way up, but he had blown out his knee. His dreams disappeared with torn cartilage. His four-year-old, however, loved the game, and his father already dreamed of having him play professionally.

Why regale you with taxi driver stories when I’m talking about moving to Florida? These two conversations are part of a broader New York experience. In this city under all sorts of circumstances, I have met people who in a small way have expanded my life. They have given me glimpses into other societies and lives and have given me vicarious new experiences. Perhaps it would happen as much to me elsewhere, but I know it happens to me often in New York City, and I will miss it. Onward to Florida.

Instead of using hired cars, we rented one, which was fine except for one thing: When we returned it, we were a quarter tank short of full because we had not seen a gas station as we neared the airport. We had neglected to learn how much the car rental company would charge us for topping it off, but I assumed it would be the usual extortionate six or eight dollars a gallon. Wrong. It was $12. Fifty-two dollars later, we left the car.

We stayed at a two-bedroom condo on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. It was a high rise among a bevy of beach high rises. This not-exactly-new building was part condo and part hotel. The clientele was American. We had stayed at a Miami Beach place a few years back where most seemed to have come from South America. In any event, the clientele was…well…not to put too fine a point upon it…tacky.

We were hungry and frazzled when we arrived, so we headed downstairs for a drink and some food. We passed up an Italian restaurant off the lobby and headed outside on what was warm and lovely evening. A tiki bar was next to the pool. When we went to check out the water temperature, a large man came over to help us. We asked him his name. He said that everyone called him Big Mike. There was a reason for this. He was BIG. Maybe 6’6” and solidly built. He looked over at his sidekick, an even larger man, and said that he called him Big Fabian. Fabian stuck out his hand and after the question told us he was 6’9”. I nervously wondered why this tiki bar needed to employ these gentle giants. A cat sauntered by as if it owned the place. Big Mike said that he had adopted it and took care of it. The cat’s name—ready for the surprise?—is Tiki. A number of dogs were also in evidence. A sign said that only service dogs were allowed, but Floridians apparently have even more need for service dogs than patrons on the New York subway, or maybe that rule was not enforced.

We sat outside the tiki enclosure and ordered. The drinks came quickly although I am not sure that there was alcohol in my dessert-like tropical concoction. The food took a long time to come, and the order was only partially correct, but the servers were welcoming and friendly, so who cared? One of the servers came over urging us to go to the beach because a full moon was just rising. She helped the spouse to get to a viewing area. Watching a full moon coming over the horizon of a body of water, which I have seen many times, is always a spectacular sight. This was no exception. Huge and golden it rose out of the sea. (Two nights later we watched a spectacular sunset from our apartment windows.)

We passed the tiki bar frequently since it was on our way to the pool or beach. The patrons may have changed from day to day, but somehow the crowd always seemed the same. Even though this was Florida, there were not many old people of our age. And while some colleges were on hiatus, it was not a spring-break crowd. A lot of the people seemed to be local. As I mentioned, it was not a particularly high-class place, but I found consolation in seeing that my overweight body looked almost svelte next to most of the men who had bodies that strained extra-large clothing. There may have been some not-so-young women “negotiating” with older men. There was a middle-aged man with a dog on his lap so small that he should have been embarrassed sitting with it and a woman on his right with a large dog. His hand regularly stroked her ass. I do not know if she welcomed it, but she certainly did not object. Perhaps the bar was best summed up when the son reported that he had seen one woman drinking a can of beer from another woman’s cleavage, urging some men to join in the revelry.

The next day we visited two places to see if they might be good places to die. That evening we headed off to a popular seafood place on the intracoastal waterway. It did not take reservations. When we pulled into the valet parking lot, we could see people — mostly young (duh!) — spilling out of the restaurant and heard blasting music. The parking lot attendant informed us that there would be an hour wait. We left and headed inland where we found a place that could seat us immediately. We sat outside in the balmy air and were especially pleased to be introduced to a new to us dish, a delicious grilled artichoke.

The next day was Saturday and not a day to look for a place to die. Instead, besides walks on the beach, we went off in search of the former home of the spouse. She remembered the neighborhood of the house but not its precise location. The house was on a canal and a half block from the intracoastal. She thought it was a wonderful spot when she was twelve since she could take a powerboat on the waterways. Her house was a modest one, and modest ones still existed in the neighborhood, but not surprisingly, many of the original homes had been replaced by much larger ones. The Fort Lauderdale of the spouse’s youth had changed dramatically. The city only extended a few blocks west of the intracoastal then, but now it goes miles further into what was once Everglades territory.

After cruising the old neighborhood as if we were teenagers, we went to a nearby fish market to get seafood we were unlikely to find in New York City. The spouse settled on yellowtail snapper filets, which she cooked perfectly that evening.

Sunday was a beach and pool day followed by dinner in a lively, popular Greek restaurant with good food. On Monday morning we looked at another possible place to die, which we liked and might choose.

So we might have found a place to die, but how about Florida? Its politics are terrible, but our transgender son deemed it “okay” and “non-threatening.” We were helped in that conclusion with a conversation with a woman who showed us around one of the potential places to die. Her son is transgender, and we learned that he had good medical care and had carved out a life for himself in Florida. Maybe we can live in the state and join its librarians in fighting book bans.

Monday afternoon we flew back to New York City, and if I believed in omens, my future would have been decided. On the one hand, it makes much sense for us to move to a place to die. On the other hand, I will miss New York City and don’t want to leave. As we approached JFK airport, we could see an almost complete arc of a rainbow welcoming us back to our home.