I grew up in the Soviet Union, more precisely in Soviet Latvia. Thanks in part to my dad, I was able to come to the United States in 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR. My dad immigrated to the US in 1978 during the so-called first wave of Jewish immigration.
I attended a relatively typical Soviet high school in Riga; it was creatively called School #87, and it specialized in Physics and Chemistry. Not all schools had a specialization, but this one did. I remember attending organic Chemistry lectures at the local university. I hated organic chemistry. High school was a 2-year affair in the old Soviet Union, so grades 9 and 10. The unwritten rule of the Soviet school system was that when you entered first grade, you became an “October Kid”, referring to the October Bolshevik revolution, and received a little red star to be worn on the lapel of your navy blue uniform jacket. The star had Lenin’s portrait engraved in the middle.
In middle school, you would be promoted to a “Pioneer” which was considered the second stage of your communist journey. You were not asked to join – you simply aged into it. You were given a red, two-pronged tie which looked quite festive atop of a white button-down shirt. I wore mine just like everyone else.
Then came high school. In high school, you were supposed to join the “Komsomol” — a communist youth organization, the last step before the actual party membership. Unlike the Pioneers, Komsomol wanted the appearance of a volunteer organization. You were supposed to ask to join and to my knowledge everyone did. I did not. Now, before you think that I was some kind of Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov, let me assure you that I was not. In the late 80s, Gorbachev’s perestroika, which means rebuilding, was in full force. The iron grip was starting to loosen and people started feeling that they can express themselves freely without facing the wrath of the state. Had these been the 70s, 60s, or before, this act of noncompliance would have gotten me and my family into serious trouble, and I doubt that I would have been so brave.
Even so, I hated the communist party and all it represented. Being raised in an educated household, I was aware of some of the atrocities committed by Soviet dictators and their henchmen against their own citizens, and their hypocritical rhetoric of equality and brotherhood was not lost on me. It was also obvious that a centrally planned economy was a colossal failure. And so when it was time to join the Komsomol, our “class leader”, Polina Kononovna, an ardent communist, insisted that I start getting ready for membership. “No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t feel like am ready.” Eventually, she left me alone. It was a small but important win for me.
When I landed in JFK in September 1989, I was 17 and I met my father essentially for the first time — my parents divorced when I was 3 years old and even though my mother tells me that I saw him a few times before he left for the US, I had very little recollection of our interactions. In 1989, my dad was already a successful physician in New Jersey. Like most immigrants from communist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union, he is a staunch conservative and a proud Republican. After experiencing the evils of communism first hand, people like my dad recoil at anything that appears to have socialist overtones. Their analysis is quite shallow, to be sure, but who has the time or desire to do a deep-dive on the fundamental differences between American liberals and Russian or Cuban communists? I certainly did not, and so I blindly inherited my dad’s conservative principles without being too political. I did not vote for a long time and when I finally did, it was for George W Bush, a decision that I later regretted.
Over the years I made it a point to learn more about American history and the American political system. The more I learned, the more conflicted I felt. On one hand, unlike the Soviet Union, the American experiment was an incredibly successful enterprise that managed to establish an independent judiciary, a free press and freedom of speech, and at least on paper, a guarantee of equal protection to all its citizens. The level of average economic prosperity was also unprecedented. On the other hand, it does not take too much research to learn about the less flattering history: atrocious treatment of Native Americans by the colonists (e.g. purposely infecting them with smallpox, an act of biological warfare), the history of slavery and racism so potent that it lasts to this day, the civil war, women’s suffrage movement (women were not allowed to vote until 1920; see Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony), the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war (deemed constitutional by the US Supreme Court! see Korematsu v. United States), Vietnam, and Chicago 7, just to name a few.
It turns out that no country is perfect and neither is my beloved US. While living in Russia I learned, then later forgot, and then again remembered that one needs to question what the government, any government is doing to and for its citizens. It now seems obvious to me what Adam Gopnik so eloquently described in his book “A Thousand Small Sanities”: liberal, progressive movement must be diametrically opposed to both the far-right (e.g. Fascism) and the far-left (e.g. Communism). These two movements devolve into totalitarian, oppressive states, and have more in common with each other than with a liberal, progressive agenda, with its respect for humanity, human rights, and human dignity above all else.
During the cold war, the world was under a Communist threat. I think in general, the US overestimated just how far USSR was willing to go — Khrushchev was fully aware and clearly unwilling to participate in the mutually assured destruction during the Cuban Missile Crisis although Castro seemed to be ready to annihilate the world. Today, by any reasonable account, the world is in danger of succumbing to right-wing nationalism, the likes of which we have not seen since the second world war. Unfortunately, American conservative politicians don’t realize how far to the right they are moving and under the direction of Donald Trump keep falling further into the abyss. As I sit here and write these words, Trump is refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the election results, an election that he so clearly lost. I never thought I would witness a coup attempt accompanied by this kind of authoritarian rhetoric from an American president. To see Trump’s playbook, if you can call it that, compare his speeches to other autocrats throughout the world: Erdoğan in Turkey, Orbán in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and the list goes on. Their dangerous message is the same: restore the country’s greatness while dispensing with basic democratic institutions, like free elections, for example.
When 2016 arrived and with the benefit of a more rounded education I promised myself that I will participate in the political process and vote in every election. Hilary Clinton was not my favorite candidate but against Trump, she seemed like a no-brainer. When Trump won, I was concerned, but I fully accepted the will of the people (even though he lost the popular vote), and I wished him well hoping that the weight of the office would induce a sense of responsibility in a seemingly irresponsible showman. Alas, this did not happen. In his book “The Fifth Risk”, Michel Lewis described just how badly he mismanaged what was a fairly well-functioning Federal Government, starting with the transition in which he refused to participate. (By Federal Government I mean federal agencies, not the legislative branch which has been in stalemate for many years.) During the 2020 election, my favorite candidate was Andrew Yang, who had some fresh ideas like UBI and did not rely on the old-school Democrat talking points like tax-the-rich. (I mean, sure, tax them, but that’s not going to solve our fundamental problems, not to mention that the rich have a lot of options when it comes to avoiding paying taxes.)
Now, in case you are trying to classify me, I am not a Democrat, I do not belong to any political party, but today I think it is important for me to go on record. When in 10 or 20 years from now and with the benefit of perspective, this period in American history is rightly recognized as one the darkest, most fragile moments since the beginning of the republic, I want my kids and my grandkids to know where I stood. I unequivocally reject Trump, Trumpism, and all that it represents. Today’s Republican representatives in Congress (but not the people who voted for them) that stand behind Trump to protect their own skin, afraid of the Twitter mobs that he may unleash on them — I do not wish you any harm but there will be a day of atonement, a judgment day when you will be unable to look your kids and your countrymen in the eye. Your names will forever be marred by your cowardice, your inhumanity, your demagoguery, and your lies, willingly told and repeated. While supporting this regime to the very end, you have sold your country and your democracy short. Shame on you! The kind of nonsense propaganda I hear from you today is comparable to what I heard from Soviet apparatchiks in the 80s and 90s.
To the 70 million Americans that voted for Trump (and to the 5 or 6 of you who will read this blog post), I want to be clear — you are not my enemy and I hope I am not yours. As a rule, I usually refrain from voicing my political opinions on social media, nothing good seems to come of it, but I did have the following Twitter conversation the other day:
I can understand my correspondent’s position but to implicate 70 million people in antisemitism because the guy they voted for is a racist is a bit much. For me personally, it is also a little too close to home. You see, my own Jewish father voted for Trump, twice, I think. What am I supposed to do with that now? He is the same father who helped me immigrate from the Soviet Union, the same father who opened his house to me and supported me, the same father who stayed with me in the hospital when I had my shoulder operation. Am I supposed to reject him just because in a momentary lapse of reason that unfortunately lasted for 4 years, he voted for Trump? Absolutely not! I do not reject him or the 70 million citizens whose concerns were ignored for way too long, legitimate concerns, who, I hope, out of desperation voted for Trump. I do not reject you. I believe you will come around, eventually, to empower representatives that put our country’s interests ahead of their own.
Thanks to Jacki Novik for proofreading and providing helpful comments.
Good to talk to you Eric. Although I felt I knew you fairly well when we were working together, I didn’t know you were an immigrant, and came that late in life. Interesting — my wife immigrated from Syria at about the same age.
I was a Trump voter, mostly because my “default value” is (R). I remember continually switching “my candidate” during the GOP primaries of 2016 as the candidates fell by the wayside, and always made the argument that Trump would never be the last one standing at the end.
Well, I was wrong.
So, since then, I have been in the unpopular political camp between the two warring sides of pro-Trump and anti-Trump, hated by both. I believe that the rhetoric and behavior from both sides has been overblown and hyperbolic, and the result of this clashing rhetoric on our political psyche has been more detrimental to the nation as a whole than anything Trump actually DID (not said).
(Key point here: I separate his policies, which have been pretty much conventional-GOP with a smattering of centrist-left ideas, like prison reform and tariffs, from his speech and tweets, which are demagogic and incendiary. Simply put, his policies have been not nearly as controversial as what comes out of his mouth and his fingers.)
I am largely in agreement with your outlooks, however. The US population is insufficiently educated on governmental theory, so everything gets called “Fascist” or “Communist/Socialist” without any real understanding of the differences between the two. Regardless, what matters is that they are both heinous authoritarian constructs which can only be imposed on people using coercive means.
I don’t agree with you, however, on the matter of “coup”. During elections, the parties send scads of lawyers to swing states to file lawsuits should something untoward be perceived as happening, as is the 1st Amendment right of every American (even the POTUS) to seek redress in the Courts. And in an election, that redress would be to (a) insure that the State in question has followed election laws properly, both state and federal, meaning (b) that all LEGALLY cast votes are counted and no ILLEGALLY cast votes are counted.
This is really all that “Team Trump” has done to date. It hardly measures up to the definition of a “coup” (which as a general rule requires at least something illegal to happen, usually that the “Leader” tries to co-opt somebody in the military to back him) in my view. Much has been written about the difference between what Team Trump have ALLEGED and what they have brought to the Courts in this period — it was fairly obvious a couple days after the election that *standard* (I’ll get back to this word in a moment) irregularities would not be enough to flip states that went Biden by tends of thousands of votes.
When I’ve made (what seems to me) to be this fairly uncontroversial observation in other forums, especially pointing out that it was the (D)’s filing the lawsuits in 2000, the (heated) response has pretty much been that the suits are frivolous due to the margins of victory. I agree with that, but that fact does not negate the POTUS’ constitutional right to bring them.
Now, back to the word *standard.* This was an election where there was a higher potential for NONstandard irregularities (meaning, ones involving thousands or tens of thousands of votes, rather than tens and hundreds) than those previous. In a matter of months, we moved from an election where < 5% of ballots cast were absentee to one where nearly 60% (IIRC) were cast absentee, where states lacked adequate time to think through the process and pass legislation appropriately. Thus, a heightened level of legal activity following this election was unsurprising whoever won, simply because there was an outside chance that unpreparedness could make a case for a larger number of ballots than usual to be declared invalid.
And that expectation came to pass, although I had hoped for more rationality from the aggrieved side than we've seen.
At any rate, we are where we are. I am hoping that for the first time in over a decade (Obama, in his quiet way, had a knack for keeping himself in the headlines compared to Bush) we can return to a more collegial time, which Biden, who is an institutionalist, seems to have in mind by publicly eschewing the "revenge policies" that some of the farther left seem to favor, and by (so far) nominating for his Cabinet individuals who are about as controversial as vanilla pudding. He will find common ground in the Senate, I hope, with other institutionalists in both parties (of which there are many) and return to said collegiality.
Time will tell. Good to chat with you.
Good to see you here Michael, hope you are well.
As to the coup — putting pressure on the members of canvassing boards not to certify votes in only those states where he lost, goes way beyond any reasonable legal maneuvers to which of course he is entitled to except when you read the allegations and learn that they provide no evidence of wrong-doing and therefore are rejected immediately by the courts. Luckily, he is as incompetent at executing a coup as he is at pretty much everything else he did in his life with the exception of the Apprentice and Trump name licensing deals. Also, Twitter, he is good at Twitter.
Michael,
Good to read your thoughtful and personal piece. These issues are far more difficult and interesting than the typical modeling tasks I’m still seeing at TIBCO. I agree that many Trump supporters have legitimate grievances; I hope these can be addressed. I do get a bit hot when their reaction is so misguided and violent (eg second amendment solutions). Humans are complex and imperfect, mixing kindness and anger in sometimes incomprehensible ways. I like what Dave Chappelle said on SNL – Trump is an optimist; I see bad people on both sides. (He didn’t get the laugh I thought he deserved, but maybe not so much funny as insightful). Hate the sin but love the sinner seems like good advice.
Best to you and your family.