Some of our commenters aren’t here. A lot of people are afraid to get on the blog in our Free Society, but they comment by e-mail. The think they’re safer sending ME personal e-mail than they would be if they used the anonymity of the blog.

To be on the blog, you just say you agree with things like the Mantra. I am personally a lot more incriminated than that.

Anyway, one of my e-mailers sent me a subject which includes the right to use it if I don’t use his name, which I never would anyway:

FROM RUSSIA:

Just got off the phone with Vladimir —-. He has a keen observation. Barak Hussein Obama is the “Gorbachev” of America. Same verbage. “Change”. “Perestroyka” (re-structuring). Everything in our country’s history was completely wrong, and we have to undo everything. Vladimir predicts America’s downfall within the next few years. Obama will lead the charge against America as we knew it. Sounds like good blog material???

ME:

Thanks, I’ll use it.

My brother used to point out that, while Solzheitsyn was a brilliant and brave man, he knew nothing about the real world. Being raised in the La La Land of Stalin’s Russia and then penned in the Gulag does not give one access to reality, however well-read one may be.

Vladimir has lived his life in a La La Land that was on its way out. The Soviet Union was a gerrybuilt machine running without oil. It was onits way to collapes from the bottom up. The minute Gorbaczev let the Soviet Union get a glimpse of its won reality, La La Land was doomed.

We were raised in a society whose basic institutions, right or wrongly used, are solid as steel. That is our PROBLEM. It is impossible for a Russian to understand that our MACHINE is solid. Its fundamental mechanical weaknesses are the nuts that are holding the wheel.

They had a bad MACHINE. We have drunk drivers. WHICH drunk holds the wheel is not that important here.

TO COMMENTERS:

You notice that I assume the American MACHINE is not going to collapse for our convenience. For fifty years I have been hearing that the American economy is based on false premises and will soon collapse, the Second Coming is imminent and if we don’t win THIS presidential election it’s all over.

In the first century Revelations said the same thing about Rome. Those who declare things are going to end are always right, EVENTUALLY. But Christians who sat and waited for that collapse or the Second Coming did not build the church.

So I don’t build on that stuff. In the real world, America is headed for lots of problems, but compared to the rest of the world it is solid as steel.

No collapse will do us any good if we have not worked out an explanation as to why it will happen and an ALTERNATIVE way of thought for the ensuing society.