I love America. I know that it sounds ridiculously like a quote from “The Godfather” by Mario Puzo, or rather like a quote from “The Godfather” movie. But still, I have genuine good feelings regarding the U.S., I don’t love America like crazy, I have some reservations about the country but I am always more than happy to visit, I studied in one of the greatest American journalism schools, some of my best friends live in America, I admire American literature, tolerate American politics, at least in Western Hemisphere, watch “Twin Peaks” and “Th House of Cards” for fun. I still subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, and pay top rouble for it. My relations with America are nice, solid and friendly, although not exactly marriage material.
For me America is not just one of the richest countries of the world, is not the world Metropolis, far from it. I consider Moscow with a couple of Moscow suburbs to be the world cultural Metropolis. The U.S. is just an exciting country, and I was always fascinated by the American people who managed to get out of different crises with a smile, they always made that extra effort which was needed for prosperous survival. America has successfully met terrible challenges of the Great Depression, has successfully dealt with numerous socialist temptations. So many terrible American politicians tried to destroy American values, and failed miserably. Good men always manage to prevail in the end. Long live America!
For a long time I’ve been in love with real American values promoted by such great political figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, and, of course, by Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest Republicans.
American literature plays a very special role in my life. Since adolescence I’ve been reading American authors, first, in translation into Russian and Ukrainian, then in the original. I read what I could get.
My long trips in Moscow subway could have been quite different without books by Salinger and Melville. Once I almost picked a fight in Mayakovskaya Subway Station with a group of sleazy punks that tried to interfere with my reading of “Moby-Dick”. Thanks to Ahab, I managed to scare them away.
Wonderful American authors keep making my life tolerable. I’ve been really fascinated by O.Henry, Mark Twain, Cheever, John Irving, John Gardner, Michael Chabon, Tom Wolfe, and many others. And, of course, I like American junk literature, which in a very professional manner is created for a primitive consumer. I love being a primitive consumer. Nothing wrong in being a primitive consumer of arts and literature, it is pure pleasure.
I was lucky enough to visit many great American cities. I studied in Missouri, the same place where Brad Pitt studied before me. I pleasantly surprised myself with my academic performance in the university. I gambled in Nevada and in Santa-Anita Racetrack, and lost about twelve dollars. My friends helped me to get tours to the most exciting Californian jails and prisons. I had ride-alongs with American cops, and roamed in the streets of really dangerous neighborhoods. My main deficiency in the States is my inability to drive a vehicle. Other than that I seem to have a pretty good idea about the country.
Anyway, people used to ask me a lot about the differences of life in Russia and life in the U.S. Being a shallow person, who was born and raised in a provincial city, I tend to get very superficial, and generalize a lot. I’m a somewhat simplified version of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple who knows that she is right but has no idea why. So, in a very simplified provincial manner I explained to my friends and family that American life could be compared with a cute salon tattoo, and Russian life is similar to rough prison tattoos of hard-core criminals. A playful butterfly on a cute girl’s buttock versus rough prison brand. America and Russia are different worlds, not that different though, skin is skin, ink is ink, and the devil is in the detail.
That was a nice, almost scientific explanation, and I was proud of it for a while. But something was missing, some kind of the Fifth Element. And I found the missing link in an unexpected place.
Several years ago, my dog started eating shit in the park. Human feces, horse manure, she had different preferences, and I decided to deal with the problem. I went to the pet shop, and started looking for the right kind of medicine. There were different versions of American medicine, but all of them claimed they would cure a dog from eating its own feces. My dog didn’t care for her own, she loved variety. Although we have some Moscow City law on this matter, most masters don’t clean after their dogs, so there is great variety available. I realized that in America the only type of shit you encounter would be your own, that’s why the pills are given to the dogs eating their own excrements.
And in Russia you have lots of chances to deal with somebody else’s pile. In America you blame only yourself when you step into something. In Russia we have every right to blame everybody else.
This is my wonderfully primitive, or rather primitively wonderful, analysis of Russo-American differences.
Forget about comparative studies, geopolitics, Shale Gale, Silk Road, rare earth metals, gold standard and rouble rate, forget paper dollars and Chinese angle. Remember tattoos and the piles of the Fifth Element. As good an explanation as any.