8-29-2000 Okay, so let me just bust in here for a second and say a few things before you read this. This is largely a reaction to a response I received from an Australian gentleman this afternoon, who'd just read my journal. I say some very unkind things about Russia in this journal, and I will happily admit that. I say some very immature things, and make some pretty harsh judgements of people, places and circumstances, and I will happily admit that. I would like to remind you that I was also twenty years of age. I had never before left the United States. I had been sheltered my entire life, brought up in a fortunate middle-class environment with parents who shielded me from a lot of the very real conditions of the world. I had not faced anything resembling personal tragedy or pain at the time. I had never faced genuine hardship or, in fact, anything less than that same middle-class environment. I was a babe in the woods, and nothing more, and I will happily admit that. Since my trip to Russia, I've learned a few things. Among them are: * Russia has no monopoly on dirty airports; they're everywhere. * Russia is not the only place in the world where not everyone grows up in a middle-class neighborhood; the poor and suffering are everywhere, I simply lived someplace where they had been hidden from sight. * A person who is economically deprived is neither a "bad" person, nor someone to fear. I learned that the first time I had to live for 2 weeks on $4US, right here, in my own town, in my own country, for the simple reason that I was poor in a $12,000US/year sort of way. * I was and still am a babe in the woods, a snob, living in a dreamworld, however you want to describe it, and I will happily admit that. When you read this, understand something important: you are not reading the words of one who was aware of the suffering of the world but chose to be judgemental and unforgiving and frightened anyway. You are reading the words of one who'd never had his eyes opened before, and who cares more now that he's been there himself on more than one occasion. That said, I refuse to edit my journal entries to be more...more whatever people want them to be. This is, word for word, what I wrote in my journal while being bussed and trained and driven around Moscow and St. Petersburg. To change these words would be, in a way, to deny the pain and embarrassment and, yes, shameful shamelessness that surrounded my realizing just how little of the world I had seen and understood. I think that would be tremendously unfair to you, and it would be tremendously egotistical of me to deny that I ever went through phases in which I didn't understand the world around me. I'm an American, and I have come to learn that yes, we are hated everywhere because of the McDonald's restaurants that have popped up in other people's back yards and the stereotype of our obnoxious personalities, both as a perceived-imperialist nation on the world stage and as an ever-present and -annoying class of tourists who stand around wondering how much things cost in "real money." And I've met Germans who were, frankly, assholes, Australians who apparently travelled to other countries just to drink their beer and pinch the asses of their women, and Scots who thought the American Southeast would be a good place to drum up support for a fully independent government being re-seated in Edinburgh by picking fist-fights. I received different treatment from workers in the same Russian stores just because one thought I was an American and the other thought I was British. In other words: we're all assholes. (My favorite thing about this rant is that so many people who read it will use it to say, 'But that's exactly what we're talking about!' Predictable much?) And if you think my words are [mean, selfish, American, un-Christian, insert favorite perjorative here], then remind yourself that I have said, and say again, that I long to go back to Russia. Nothing would make me happier than to spend tonight walking through Red Square, smoking a terrible-tasting Russian cigarette with a taste of obscenely bad vodka on my breath, fearing for my wallet and, yes, loving every single second of it. So there. --MGW
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