Because You Never Asked

 

(5/09, Spain)

     I think it was the essay “Jerry Springer or Pro Wrestling Revisited”, where the idea of a not uncommon, almost supernatural experience was first mentioned in this series. Has this one ever happened to you?

     After a prolonged absence from your consciousness, you wonder what ever happened to so and so, I haven’t seen her for so long --- and boom! The next day or so, who should come walking into view --- . (Coincidentally, I had such an experience yesterday. Being that I wrote this piece about a month and a half ago and am now preparing it on my computer, it is has nothing to do with what happened in this essay.
While out and about in the morning, I saw someone who looked just like So And So, so much so that I thought it was him. I hadn’t seen So And So for perhaps a few years. Anyhoo, it turned out not to be So And So . Later that day, at the local tennis courts, who should come walking into view ---).

     I really hadn’t given much thought to Milan Kundera since I’d written two essays about him a number of years ago (see essays “Milan Kundera” and “Who’s Smarter Than Milan Kundera?”). And then, after that prolonged absence from my consciousness, there he was in the essay I wrote just previous to this one (see essay “Who’s Smarter Than GTB”?). But that was voluntary and not the situation we are currently talking about.

     So there I was, writing the stuff about Milan Kundera. When I put a wrap on it for that day, I walked over to the hotel I frequent while I’m in Spain, ordered a café con leche, and sat down to relax. The coffee table in front of me was festooned with a smattering of magazines, one being the Sunday supplement of an important newspaper. Who do you think was featured on the cover?

     Cosmic, eh? This feature article was perfectly titled for the coincidence it represented: “Kundera Returns”.

     The great icon is now 80 years old and is still producing. He has recently written a long piece of non-fiction called “An Encounter”. It is an update or final review of his whole intellectual output, a kind of this-is-how-it-happened and this-is-how-I-feel-today. The magazine article was a one chapter advance of the work dwelling upon the politics of the 60’s in the then Czechoslovakia, and how it led to the exile of so many writers like Kundera, who could not function in the limited creative space of a Stalinist state. It is not my purpose to discuss this material, but there was one paragraph which triggered this essay. Before getting to that, some biographical-historical material is needed for the reader to assimilate this essay.

     Kundera was born in 1929. In 1948, the Soviet Union claimed the spoils of its efforts in WWII by establishing its hegemony over eastern Europe, thus becoming the true power behind the veil of independence of each respective nation. These nations, including Czechoslovakia, became satellites in the dominions of the Soviet empire. This means Kundera’s most formative years were spent in the noose of Stalin’s world, where artistic output was used to propagate the state’s ideology --- or it was not used at all. Those not in compliance were looked upon as “personas non grata”, and even worse.

     By the time the 60’s rolled around, Kundera and the Czech-Soviet authorities were up to their butts with each other, and the divorce and subsequent permanent exile in Paris loomed unavoidably on the horizon. But before that definitive break, an amazing historical moment arrived that changed everything.

     Regardless of anything ideological, the Czechs never sympathized with the Soviet interference in their affairs. By the 1960’s, a movement to rid the country of the Russians and their model of life, spearheaded by the Union of Writers, was maturing into a viable force. The Stalinist state apparatus tried to crack down, but things had gone too far. The movement had “contaminated” even the Central Committee of the Party and an unknown politician named Alexander Dubcek was put in charge in January of 1968. The decision to stop toeing the Soviet line emerged.

     This was the beginning of those few months of independence known in America as the “Velvet Revolution” and in Europe as the “Springtime of Prague” (I like the American name better). The paragraph I quote from Kundera’s latest work pertains to this famous blink in history, but there is a thing or two to clear up before I get there, especially for the American reader, who so fervently believes his or her opinions are not tainted with ideological propaganda, a la Joe Stalin and the boys.

     As we know, the Velvet Revolution did not last long. The Soviet army put a sudden end to it in August of 1968 and the iron fist of hard line communism was imposed for another 20 years. American and western propaganda in general, has always used this event as a way to discredit an opposition ideology, but that was just a smokescreen. What the Soviet army did in 1968 can be far less attributed to communism and far more attributed to imperialism. The proof of this is how the American empire has reacted to socio-political unrest in the areas it considers its dominions, mainly Latin America.

     Perhaps we can place the starting line as far back as 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine spelled it out, but I’d say Teddy Roosevelt’s 1898 war with Spain, where Cuba and other assorted tidbits became satellite states of the Gringos, was the beginning of baseball in Latin America, which, when that last out is recorded in the scorebook of history, might be the only positive legacy left behind by American interventionism. Since that time --- either through the manipulative shenanigans of its intelligence agencies, the military funding and training for our puppet regimes, or direct military intervention --- the United States has quashed the numerous attempts of many countries to rid themselves of Uncle Sam’s dictates. This includes Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, cha-cha-cha. It is ironic that the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent American imperial attempt to fill that void, has over extended the gringo military apparatus to such an extent, that it is having a great deal of trouble keeping the kids in line --- Chavez & Co. --- in its own backyard.

     This is not a defense of the Soviet actions in 1968. It is only meant to suggest that the “good guys” have acted no differently than the “bad guys” in similar situations. It is, as it always is, a question of perception, perceptions created by different propaganda mechanisms.

     And this is where the paragraph from Kundera’s latest work (I’m getting there) comes into play. One must remember that dissidents like Kundera were always used as blue chip investments in the ideological battles of the 20^th century, and the treatment was frequently self serving and superficial. What Kundera truly believed or didn’t believe in was not capitalism or communism. He believed in liberty. What brought him into conflict with the political class of his country was not its economic ideology, but rather, the brutish, paranoid way they applied it.

     Kundera writes about those few months of “Velvet Revolution” with the dreamy nostalgia one might remember a first love. “A system was born without any preparation, almost by accident, that had no precedents: few rich people, few poor people, a completely nationalized economy, a cooperative agricultural establishment, both universal education and health care completely gratuitous. But it also put an end to the secret police, political persecution, and instituted complete freedom of expression”. He goes on to say, “I can’t say what possibilities the future held for such a system. Considering the geo-political situation at that time, I suppose they were null. But what might have happened in some other geo-political situation? Who knows? In any event, the moment it existed was superb”.

     This is not the same Kundera that has been used for decades in the west as a wrecking ball against socialist ideology.

     As mentioned above, the Soviet crackdown in Prague extended its mandate for 20 years. Perhaps it is not just coincidence that this event occurred 20 years after its domination of the country began. Perhaps it is not just coincidence that 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unopposed, “savage capitalism” this historic event spurred on, is now showing the cracks of its own contradictions, so much so, that the most blatant forms of socialism are being used to save it. But why save it? It is ecologically destructive; it is emotionally adolescent; it distributes the world’s resources in an inequitable, inefficient manner; it creates strife and conflict. Both hard core communism and savage capitalism have failed --- or maybe it would be better to say they’ve gotten us to where we are. It’s time to move on.

     The imposition of the economic system the world is now suffering is as totalitarian in nature as any other socio-political system has been. Its message is controlled and delivered by the huge sums of private capital for whom their governments work. Self interest, not ideology, is its driving force. Its dogma, in the service of this self interest, has become as narrowly deified as Marxist rhetoric became, but it is slickly “marketed” as only a neo-liberal capitalist knows how. As I write in 2009, it is not enough to simply pick up the pieces and put it back together again. We need a new paradigm for living, one far less based upon the hyper-consumption glorified and needed by the neo-liberal system.

     We must open our minds to all solutions. The world we live in, like the Czechoslovakia the Velvet Revolution found itself in, is an unprecedented one, primarily due to the technological fecundity that has been developed. I, like the Kundera of 1968, would like to see where it could go --- if only the geo-political situation would permit it.

     Post Script: While preparing this essay for my website, an old style military coup in Honduras removed a democratically elected president. While American “information” sources spit and fart all kinds of vitriol against the dubious electoral process in Iran, the patently undemocratic removal of a leader not to Uncle Sam’s liking in Honduras hardly receives a gentle zephyr’s worth of attention. Ain’t democratic imperialism great?