'My family is turning feral under my very eyes'...

[Subdivisions]

Soviet Union collapse author http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov">Dmitry Orlov, translates "a letter sent in by one young, once optimistic Russian who finds himself marooned in some blighted Boston exurb in southern New Hampshire".


Dear Dmitry,

I hope you don't mind that this is in Russian. I think that this way I can be more completely honest. I am a relatively recent graduate of one of the many faceless post-Soviet institutions of higher learning, with a degree in philosophy. Last year I moved to the USA and married an American woman.

The question of when the modern capitalist system is going to collapse has interested me since my student years, and I have approached it from various directions: from the commonplace conspiracy theories to the serious works of Oswald Spengler and Noam Chomsky. Unfortunately, I still can't fathom what it is that is keeping this system going.

My wife is a very pleasant woman, but a typical white conservative American. Whenever any political question comes up, she starts ranting about the Constitution and calling herself a libertarian conservative and a constitutionalist. I used to think that she is well-educated and understands what she is talking about. In fact, she is the one who introduced me to the US, and I once believed everything she told me about it. But as I found out later, she understands nothing about politics, and just repeats various bits of populist nonsense spouted by Severin, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and other mass media clowns. Well, I am not going to try to prove to my wife that she is wrong on a subject that I don't quite understand myself. After all, she is a good wife. And so I try to steer clear of any political questions when I am with the family, although I do not always succeed.

...snip...

Unfortunately, I feel the pernicious influence of all this on my own family right here and now. You don't have to be a brilliant visionary to realize that in the current situation all these endless suburbs, built on the North American model, are slowly but surely turning into mass graves for the millions of former members of the middle class. Those that do not turn into mass graves will become nature preserves - stocked with wild animals that were once human. My family is turning feral under my very eyes. Lack of resources has forced us to live according to the Soviet model - three generations under one roof. There are six of us, of which only one works, who is, consequently, exasperated and embittered. The rest of the household is gradually going insane from idleness and boredom. The television is never turned off. The female side of the family has been sucked into social networks and associated toys. Everyone is cultivating their own special psychosis, and periodically turns vicious. In these suburbs, a person without a car is as if without legs, and joblessness does not allow any of us to earn money for gas, and so the house is almost completely isolated from the outside world. The only information that seeps in comes from the lying mass media. And I understand that millions of families throughout America live this way! This is how people turn into "teabaggers," while their children join street gangs.

...snip...

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/03/corn-madness.html


Anyone seeing this sort of situation in your community?

[louis-t]

1. Wow

How very sad.

[Joanne98]

2. Whoa! Great description.

[WCGreen]

3. Interesting...

People, lot's of people, have been suffering lives filled with quite desperation since the 50's when, I believe, that the threats against the people started to become so great that no matter what you did as an individual, you couldn't protect yourself...

[jody]

4. The author makes a good case for him to return to Russia. n/t

[kenny blankenship]

13. He's also making a good case that he's already there

just waiting a little while should make the transformation complete.

[RaleighNCDUer]

14. Or any other civilized country.

I favor France, myself (though I don't speak the language).

[Hello_Kitty]

5. This is what's going on in Arizona. eom

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Could you share a bit more of details about that,Kitty?

[Hello_Kitty]

12. We got slammed by the housing bubble.

For the last 10 years housing developments were popping up like weeds. Three years ago it seemed like you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting at least 3 people who were involved in real estate in some way. So many zero down subprime liar loans were being made and people (including me, I'm sad to say) using their homes as ATM. Now we have a large percentage of homeowners underwater and thousands getting foreclosed on every month. We had a right-leaning populace to begin with here in Maricopa County but now the batshittery has gone off the charts. The GOP has pretty much officially been taken over by teabaggers and our Republican led legislature recently passed a "birther" bill, meaning that every Presidential candidate will have to submit proof of his/her U.S. citizenship in order to be certified for the ballot.

[arcadian]

16. I think about the environmental degradation all that "development" cost.

All the once farm land turned into cheap cookie cutters.

[Hello_Kitty]

18. Yup. We used to have great citrus orchards. Now most of them are gone.

I'm a bit of a hypocrite for saying this, as I'm not an AZ native, but we really have too many people here. It's the desert, folks.

[debunkthelies]

81. I also live in Arizona

In the White Mountains, where two years ago my son-in-law had a painting business and couldn't find enough hours in the day to complete the jobs he contracted for, now he's just barely getting enough work out of town. My daughter works for the State and has just transferred to Yuma so that her husband can get work with the military there. and yet we have these Mc Mansions still being built here and I have to wonder where the people get the money for such enormous houses, there is no work here. :shrug:

[Wednesdays]

32. McMansions all over the country landscape

While once-beautiful inner city homes sit vacant, and rot.

[JHB]

69. And the ones that aren't rotting...

...have been converted into "luxury" dwellings that are just out of the question for anyone with less than a six-figure income.

[surrealAmerican]

66. Not only that, but ...

... what about our ability to grow our own food crops, rather than importing them?

[msongs]

7. lol russian immigrants are NOT a blessing in the central valley of CA nt

[Luminous Animal]

41. From my experience, in a political context,

they are remarkably reactionary.

[Go2Peace]

55. You have to realize, this is the new "America" and the rules immigrants learn

Immigrants have no "historical memory". That is why Republicans are very involved with immigrant groups, they are perfect for transforming. Also, keep in mind, the people who immigrate here (from peaceful countries), are generally people who come to "get rich". They have been sold the idea that America is about MONEY. They have little understanding of our other traditional values.

That does not mean they are bad people. But if you are looking for liberals in some of these communities good luck. That is not who we are encouraging to come here, and not what we are teaching them about America.

Maybe it is time for liberal organizations to reach out to some of the other immigrant communities (outside of hispanic groups), because most social organizations for many different immigrant communities are almost all conservatives, especially churches.

[DemoTex]

8. "The television is never turned off."

Scary indeed.

:scared:

[eagertolearn]

64. I find where I live the television is always on Fox news and the people are eating it up!

[FarCenter]

9. He's right about the exurbs -- as the cost of energy goes up they are very unattactive

[Fumesucker]

10. On our property we have four generations and a minimum of eleven people under two roofs..

Sometimes we have thirteen people, one couple is homeless and drifts from one place to another to sleep.

Out of that two people are working and three are on Social Security.

The television is turned off every so often but at least half the time there is one or more on all night.. (there are about nine TV's between the two houses although I could have missed one or two)

I at least haven't left the property other than to shop in about four months (long enough that I've lost track of just when) and I know there is one other family member who also rarely leaves except for doctor's visits.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

44. Are you unique in your area?

I sense the demise of America in many ways, but your description of your circumstance is rather shocking to me.
I suppose I am taken aback so much because you have always presented your viewpoints with clarity and pause. To me, if circumstances were that restrictive to mobility and socialization, I would myself have a hard time in conveying the demeanor you exhibit.

[Fumesucker]

59. I really don't know for sure..

I get almost all of my socialization with my family and through the intertubes, I was divorced a little over a year ago and my social life such as it was collapsed with the divorce.

I doubt I'm unique, if you end up without a car in a lot of America there simply isn't any alternative way to get around. I let my ex keep the one car we had even though the car was actually mine since she had a job to get to and I don't. There aren't any sidewalks in our area except within a few subdivisions and the main roads often don't even have a shoulder to walk on, it's rather hilly here and there's more than a few places where there are bridges with no place for pedestrians to walk safely.

Thanks for your kind words, BTW.. :hi:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

83. Many are grappling to make sense of this newly evolving America.

It's not quite what the TeeVee commercials promised.

I am glad that you are surrounded by folks that are 'family'. That sense of belonging, and ability to bond daily is crucial in forging an attitude and outlook that will see us through the turbulence strewn about our future paths.

Best to you, FS. :hi:

[Greyhound]

11. "all that's left for Americans to do is to play each other for the suckers that they have become."

It takes a long time to go through a carcass as big as the U.S. but we're getting close the end of the leftover sandwiches and even the soup's getting watery.

It is everywhere here, but then it has been for at least 20 years, all that's overtly changed is the volume.

[branders seine]

15. Job-Less America

Land that I love...

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. Dimitry Orlov has a famous comparison of Russia vs America collapse

scenarios.
I read it a year ago and just now found it again.
Gives much to think about.

Many comparisons, you need to scroll down to see each topic.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259


edit to add:

Here are 2 of the charts on the page:

[PufPuf23]

19. Thanks for the sobering link

and look at America.

Having lived urban, suburban, and rural, I am glad to have returned "home" to live out my life rural (and simple).

[dixiegrrrrl]

20. You and me both.

We moved back here after a few years of city life, in 05, when the handwriting was real apparent.
Small town, solid community, lots of woods and garden space.
I feel much more secure here.

[boppers]

52. I kept moving into the city.

I started on a goat farm out in the desert, then a small city, then suburb of a large city, and I am finally in a proper "city"...
(Pima County, AZ->Tucson, AZ->Chamblee, GA->Portland, OR)

Maybe the places I moved were all lucky, or maybe I was looking for different things. In the country, nobody heard me screaming, in the city, neighbors are all around.

[YOY]

58. There are several factors there unspoken of...

And some overestimated.

Not all of Russia is accessibly by public transportation. Most is not. Their rail network was great once. HAs gone to rot as of recent. Did not take advantage of modern improvements before they went away.

I have to argue that it's not a socialism versus capitalism thing so much as a one party that could not adjust to changing times.

We of course have two branches of the right wing...so we aren't too far away.

[pundaint]

67. You left out guns We're no 1 in guns so we can demand stuff. We're OK.

[Maru Kitteh]

21. There isn't anything wrong with housing three generations in a home. It's beneficial to all.

Casting our families (elders and youth) to the winds has not been beneficial to us as a society.

[Fumesucker]

22. It depends a lot on the people involved..

We have up to thirteen members of four generations living under two roofs on the same property here, there have been a couple of really nasty disputes in the last year that have lead to deep divisions in the family but none of us can get away.

I had a sister in law live with us three times over the years before I was divorced, after the last time she lived with us it took me over a year before the sound of her laugh didn't quite literally make the hair on the back of my neck stand up..

After she lived with us for over a year rent free we found out she had considerably more money in the bank than we did when she moved in..

One of the reasons a lot people don't like living in small towns is that they can be so stifling, everyone knows everyone else's business and the gossip flies thick and fast.

[Codeine]

25. Not all families are created equal.

And not everyone is cut out to live assholes-to-elbows in a multi-generational house.

[Hello_Kitty]

27. Seriously.

I get so tired of these clueless gits who romanticize cultures where extended families all live under the same roof. I'd fucking rather die than live with 20 of my closest relatives, thank you very much. It's very rarely by choice and usually due to economic and space constraints.

[MattBaggins]

29. Oh come on now

I've seen The Golden Girls and it doesn't seem so bad.

[KittyWampus]

33. tossing ones family to the wind is a fairly new development. It's not about romanticizing.

It's about objective assessments.

[The Green Manalishi]

72. Everybody in my family got the hell away from everyone else

as soon as they could.

There's a reason we have so many one family dwellings with people living 1000 miles from the nearest relative. The same reason my dog licks himself.

I moved out at 15, my wife at 18, mom moved 1200 miles away (giving me the house) after dad died.

Outside of my wife and a friend or two I don't really want or need to see ANYBODY more often than once a year.

But I'd be happier on a planet Earth with a population of two or three million, total.

I'm not racist, I'm not sexist, just misanthropic.

[rfranklin]

63. But people have to have work and earn a living...

That is the key element that is not really being addressed in our society.

[daggahead]

23. I live in an exurb of Detroit ...

It seems like every month there is another foreclosure in our neighborhood. This is slow, compared to other parts of the country. The latest news says that non-foreclosed house sales are up 25% in my county. I wonder where those houses are, because there are are houses (and storefronts) in my town that have been for sale (or lease) for the past 5 years.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Fumesucker]

26. Yeah, his wife does sound like a douchenozzle...

We finally agree on something.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Canuckistanian]

38. You're right

Stuck in a suburb with no car, three generations under a roof and nothing to watch but Fox News.

It must be a paradise.

[WildEyedLiberal]

35. Yeah but he's criticizing AMERICA so it must be true!!!! Every word!!!!

[Hekate]

45. see my post #43; it doesn't feel genuine somehow

[Lilith Velkor]

28. Community?

What's that?

[butterfly77]

30. The problem is that..

many knew it and were living through the bush years but no one paid attention especially the lying ass media.

They loved to play the rightwing mantra about how wonderful is in America and the media laughed at us and called us liberal nuts..

They still try it but it isn't working for many who knew all along it is the pull yourself up by your bootstraps,the ones who called us conspiracy theorists who now are shouting the loudest.

[Brickbat]

34. Not to make a sweeping generalization or anything, but

what a very, very Russian letter.

[ZenKitty]

42. LMAO!

Indeed. :)

[Brickbat]

78. I know, right?

[Blue_Tires]

36. he's married to Orly

[Demeter]

37. I've Seen It Since the 80's

Perhaps because I was in the high-tech bubble burst on both coasts. People couldn't find work, couldn't sell their houses, couldn't give them away. They went crazy quietly. I left for my native Michigan, where people are more inured to adversity and less likely to go off the rails. Even though Michigan has been in Depression, not anything like a recession, since 9/11, there is some toughness of mind keeping us mostly together. And we are turning our backs on the elite, the govt. and all. We are working on the community, grassroots level.

I don't have much hope for the country, but I think the Renaissance will start here.

[Tsiyu]

39. Don't miss the best parts

This guy cracks me up.

In a later Comment:

*snip*

"This is Yevgeny! Thank you everybody for kind words and constructive criticism. It's been a little while since I wrote this email to mr. Orlov who has been so kind to send me a free copy of "Reinventing Collapse". So, since then I have stepped a little forward in developing relationships with the local community (if such exists, not sure yet). To be honest with you, I LOVE America, first and foremost. For the first time in my life I feel like this is the place where I belong. It might not seem this way according to the post, but come on, you can't say everything in one email :). This blog and its readers is one of the million proofs that this country is full of thinking people, caring for each other, and I knew that. What I realized through the process of filling the gap in the knowledge about U.S.A. history in a local public library - nearly all the benefits, all the good publicly accessed things and rights in this country are the result of a long, painful struggle of the populace."


*snip*

worth reading...



:kick:

[tavalon]

40. Yep, feral describes it

[Hekate]

43. Hmmmm. This whole thing will go viral; it reads like RW spam, only post-Soviet.

It just has that spammy feeling about the way it's composed. "The Decline and Fall of the USA, Paper Tiger."

Could just be me and my literary criticism, though.

Hekate

[NYC_SKP]

46. I think you're right. The first two paragraphs seem contrived. But the third paragraph...

...is a terrific and accurate indictment of suburbia, the suburbia I see in my parts of the country.

Interesting.

[pa28]

48. You are right to be skeptical.

In 2008 Igor Panarin was promoting a scenario where the US fell into a state of total collapse and broke up into 5 or 6 different parts. He was billed as a respected professor and academic and his stuff got wide dissemination in the US media. As it turned out he was also associated with the KGB during the Soviet era and a psychological warfare expert as well.

True or false it's a gripping and well written story but something about it rings off key.

[Hekate]

51. It reads like well-composed "you-are-there" future-fiction. There's just enough realism to hook...

... the reader (look at this thread!), but it is still fiction. At least when you pick up a copy of Analog or a book from the Del-Rey imprint you know it's fiction.

I had forgotten about Panarin the psy-ops guy. Again, enough realism to hook the reader: there's a long-standing genre of future-fic that has the North American countries breaking up into geographical/cultural regions, just as he proposed.

"It *could* happen" doesn't mean that it *is* happening, at least not on the dystopian scale put forth by the guy referenced in the OP.

Hekate


edited for tpoy

[Hannah Bell]

54. i had the same sense. & considering this guy's background, when he immigrated (long before the

collapse of the ussr -- in the 70s), and his whole "apocalypse is coming" schtick....

to me it has that smell of intelligence about it.

[Subdivisions]

76. Well now. Perceptions. I'll admit, and not for the first time, that

I am not nearly as well-read or as well-educated as many here are. But I'm working on that =). Your perception is interesting because it hadn't occured to me upon reading the piece. Also, I am not familiar with RW spam as I purposely read none of it. I am also not familiar with Panarin.

Could you please break it down a bit more?

[pa28]

87. I should answer considering I brought up Panarin.

You should look up some of is material during the crash. It was designed to push us down the stairs at a time when things looked incredibly bleak.

In any case please don't think I was throwing cold water on you because I really enjoyed the writing even if I have some doubts about what the motive might be. Glad you took the time to post it.

[gkhouston]

80. "Composed" is the word for it. I wonder if Orlov wrote this himself. n/t

[upi402]

47. like a lick-on tattoo

that may end up permanent. Hope he finds his way here if it's real!

[XemaSab]

49. In many ways this seems like an exaggeration except for one point:

My BFF, his boyfriend, his boyfriend's daughter, his boyfriend's sister, his boyfriend's sister's boyfriend, his boyfriend's brother, and his boyfriend's dad are all living under one roof.

Two of them have uncertain incomes, one of them is collecting social security, and I don't think the teenager or the other three adults are working.

So you've got seven people living in a three-bedroom house with one certain income, and two uncertain incomes.

Welcome to America. :P

[REP]

50. I wonder if this is good translating, or good editing

The writing is quite good, and could easily become a novella or longer, but one wonders if the letter didn't get a little polish from the translator, who is also a writer. Someone so sharp surely would have been less naive about the politics of this country, especially if he really studied Chomsky (true, he's primarily a profressor of linguistics, but that is not the way he is mentioned in this "letter.")

[sam kane]

53. how can his wife be a "pleasant" woman and rant like Rush?

"good" and "understands nothing?" I have never heard anyone speak of their wife this way before. Interesting read, but missing truthiness.

[PassingFair]

60. She puts out.

Russian definition of a "good woman".

[leveymg]

56. Looks like the U.S. and the Soviet Union ended up destroying each other. Only, Russia has rebuilt

while we're still in decline with a long way still to go before we, too, bottom out a land of penniless pensioners, closed schools, and little bands of extreme Right-wing nationalists led by idled Generals and Mafiyya chieftains.

Such is the fate of evil empires, everywhere.

[Hekate]

77. Russia has huge problems. Many of their socialist systems have collapsed, there's an enormous heroin

... problem that they don't even know how to begin to come to grips with (they're being flooded with the cheap stuff coming out of Afghanistan), they still think HIV is a disease of effete and corrupt Western gays so it is spreading fast via hospitals and prisons, for awhile about the only place a poor boy (as in very-underage male) could get three-squares and an education of sorts was by joining the Army. Some people have scored a lot of money by riding the wave of unregulated capitalism, but the old corruption has met the new corruption head-on and multiplied. And the alcoholism is as rampant as ever.

I think I'll take the faltering US over the former USSR, where certain cultural norms have somehow stood the test of time regardless of the Tsar, the USSR, or the all new and improved capitalism.

Hekate

[leveymg]

84. Sounds like Detroit or Oakland

but with more oil revenue.

[Hekate]

85. Rethink that comparison and scale it up to a country larger than ours, not just a city or two.

[cali]

57. lol. the rhetoric in this- even accounting for this being the guy's second language

is very odd.

[Pooka Fey]

61. OMG.

[Pharaoh]

62. This guy nails it!

Big K&R!!

[scentopine]

65. Seriously great writing and great point of view, we are feral game for wall street sociopaths -nt

[GodlessBiker]

68. "She is a good wife"? What the hell does that even mean in light of how he describes her?

He sounds like he didn't know his wife very well when he married her.

[Tesha]

88. Perhaps she had huge...

...tracts of land?

Tesha

[kenfrequed]

70. Frightening

And this foundation will make scapegoating all the easier for future demogouges as people know less but believe or suspect absurditites.

Very good writing though a very sad state of affairs.

[midnight]

71. Thanks for sharing this story.

[Subdivisions]

74. WOW! Thanks to everyone for your recs and comments. I had no

idea this OP would be this popular. I've been around but mostly working in the background and haven't revisited this post since shortly after posting it.

I thought Yevgeny's description of how his family is handling the recession was interesting. He's a newly-planted Russian immigrant. And, though he is observant, he can't fully understand our culture. Russians (of the former Soviet variety) were used to living modest lives compared to their American couterparts. I wondered while reading Yevgeny's letter how his experience is playing out similarly in American suburban households. I've lived in the suburbs and, even without a recession and in boom times, felt as if I was trapped. I can't imagine how it must be to be to be a mobile and active suburbanite that is suddenly trapped at home by economic circumstances similar to Yevgeny's description. But he has experience in adversity to draw strength from. Spoiled Americans have this entitlement syndrome that is sure to factor in to the psychology of economic adversity. I firmly believe we lost family togetherness with our contemporary lifestyles. And, it should be considered, seeking a bright side, a good thing that economic adversity is bringing families back together under one roof, in many cases three generations. But, as in Yevgeny's case, is it really?

I think it is rather quaint that Yevgeny comes in to comment later on that page that he still loves America and that, regardless of our current challenges, it is still the land of hope and dreams.

[patrice]

73. You know what? FERAL is The. Perfect. Word. for what is happening, not only to people with problems,

but also to those whose future have been sign, sealed, and delivered to them by their slavish obedience to Mammon. People who "don't have a care in the world" are turning feral on U.S. and I know this for a fact, because they are some of the people whom I talk to.

[Caliman73]

75. Not really seeing it too much.

I live in a fairly liberal and smallish city though. I think that there are always these kinds of stories floating around especially when times are difficult and there is a sense of insecurity. I do think that the US is declining in wealth and power, and in the end it may not be a bad thing. Many in our nation have believed our own press far too long. We are not flawless. There are many problems that have not been addressed in this country let alone solved, yet we are all over the world telling other countries that they have to solve their own problems according to our solutions.

Change is scary and can be very painful, but I think that if we can hold on and possibly learn from history, we can settle into a more realistic place in this planet. I know that this is idealistic but you have to maintain a little hope.

[Pharaoh]

86. Actually Caliman

we are long past any point where a viable solution may be at hand, we are well into the collapse of Capitalism through greed and corruption and other criminal acts by government and corporate "officials".

It is merely that most of us have not seen the forest through the trees as of yet............

[agent46]

79. What a perspective

As an outsider this fellow sees what's happening in America from a fresh perspective. Wow. Gives one pause.

[deaniac21]

82. God, it would be rough for anyone in Boston.