- minds of Americans

Lede: My month-long tour of the country was an eye-opening experience, and so was the
hostility that met me back home

2 Jun 2023, RT Op-Ed

At the end of April, my daughter Victoria and I departed New York City's JFK
airport, ultimately bound for the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, the first
destination of what would be a 26-day, 12-city tour of Russia.

...

I left on this adventure fully cognizant of the existence of an informational
pandemic in America known as Russophobia, and I always believed that I was
realistic as to the challenges that I would have to face in trying to convert my
Russian experience into a fact-based vaccine to counter this disease of the
American mind. However, the scale of the obstacles that I imagined overcoming
paled in comparison to the reality that hit home literally as I stepped off the
aircraft on our way back home, when Victoria and I were both pulled out of the
passport checkpoint for an hours-long interrogation by investigators from
Customs and Border Protection who specialize in travelers from designated
nations such as Russia.

I will start by noting that the treatment my daughter and I received was
professional and courteous. I understand the political reality of the times we
live in, and the perceived necessity of questioning US citizens who travel to
Russia while relations between our two nations are at an all-time low. My
concern is not in the conduct of the interrogation, but rather the substance of
the foundational information upon which the questions asked of me were based. As
the CBP officer admitted, he had interviewed hundreds of Russians after the
start of the military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The picture he had
of Russia was singularly grounded in the perspective of political dissidents who
had a bone to pick with President Vladimir Putin, and the narrative that they
painted about Russia had become gospel for the CBP. By extension, it has heavily
influenced the overall assessment by the US government, since these dissident
debriefings constitute a major source of the primary intelligence used by
national security analysts throughout the American intelligence community.

In short, my interrogation quickly became a debate between myself on the one
hand, and a combination of Alexey Navalny (the imprisoned Russian opposition
figure who most of the Russian dissidents support, according to the officer) and
the Ukrainian government on the other. Virtually every point I made was
immediately defined as "pro-Russian propaganda." I tried to impress upon the CBP
officer the reality of Russia, today, especially concerning both the high level
of support for, and underlying criticism of, the Russian government about the
military campaign in Ukraine. However, in the end my arguments, and the facts
they were based upon, were categorized as "Kremlin talking points" no matter how
hard I tried. I left the interrogation with a new appreciation of how deeply
ingrained into the intellectual DNA of the official US government the Navalny
and Ukrainian narratives have become, and how difficult it will be to root them
out.

...

Upon my return home, I was able to access my email account, which I was not able
to do while in Russia, and immediately stumbled upon an intramural discussion
among people I respect, who possess similar professional backgrounds and
anti-war inclinations. It revolved around the issue of whether there was
anything more Russia, and in particular Putin, could have done to avoid a war in
Ukraine. Some amongst this group insisted that Putin had no choice but to act,
while others argued that there were always options short of war that could have
been pursued.

What struck me about this debate was the reality that, save for very few
exceptions, the underlying analysis was conducted from an American point of
view, with little or no regard as to what would be politically possible in
Russia, or what the factual foundation of the problems being discussed were. The
mirror-imaging of American perspectives onto Russian reality resulted in the
creation of a counter-narrative that was as fundamentally flawed as it was
factually challenged. For those who argued that Putin could have avoided war,
their arguments lacked any grounding in Russian reality or the facts of the
case.

The lack of insight into how Russia functions created artificial expectations of
Russian behavior which, when not met, generated angst among the participants
about the irresponsible actions of Putin and his government that in turn helped
feed an overall anti-Russian narrative. As this debate underscored, even among
well-meaning people inclined to have an open mind about the country, Russophobia
and an overall ignorance of the Russian reality creates pre-conceived
intellectual obstacles which are difficult to overcome.

The byproduct of such a fundamentally flawed approach toward understanding
Russia is the hate-filled rhetoric of officials like South Carolina Republican
Senator Lyndsey Graham, a lifelong Russophobe, who has crowed about US taxpayer
dollars used to finance military aid to Kiev being "the best money we've ever
spent" and gloated about how "Russians are dying" in the war. Under normal
circumstances, such blood curdling rhetoric would be openly challenged by most
Americans as unreflective of our values. Russophobia, however, is a disease of
the mind, the symptoms of which are the termination of rational thought.
-- Cont'd at https://archive.is/2Le7D