No Terrorists Here
There’s a delightful woman being interviewed on television, my mother tells me the other day. She’s identified the cause of terrorism and written a book about it. Who hasn’t? Childhood trauma. Gag.
After I get past my knee-jerk rage at yet another apologist depiction of the perpetrator as victim, I start pondering how this Soviet refugee (mom) represents a drop in the ocean of the development of socialist thought in North America in the 20th century.
They escaped during WWII. Her mother was born at the turn of the century, and survived the Russian Revolution, Lenin, Stalin, and two world wars there. My grandfather was taken repeatedly by the KGB and finally only his blood returned to mark the door of their home. Every other family member was killed or disappeared.
I grew up believing that my parents (who met here) were capitalists, grateful for freedom, for the gift of a new life in a system of free enterprise. Half a century later, I’m watching in dismay as mom displays an increasing desire for care and succor from the state, and happily joins in a pity party for insane and brutal murderers.
This is very hard to see, and harder to comprehend.
I’m glimpsing those underlying theories poking up their ugly heads and thinking about the fact that she was one of the first generation of children educated fully under the Soviet regime. If that indoctrination of a child (whose parents refused to capitulate and refused to renounce) who singlehandedly dragged her mother to freedom through countless warzones remains intact below the surface, then how much deeper the conditioning of subsequent generations.
Mom regularly tells me about new arrivals from Russia who promptly turn around and go back because it’s ‘too hard here’ and ‘they aren’t valued and appreciated’.
Hmm, does this sound at all familiar?
Many WWII survivors seem cold and crude and harsh to us, their lucky pampered children and grandchildren. I can’t bear to see them bow their heads in shame as they get older. There is no shame in survival. I and my children wouldn’t be here, free and alive, if you didn’t do whatever you had to. Be proud. May we all live free or die fighting.
A reminder for today:
TORONTO, ON – June 3, 2006
Seventeen Arrested on Anti-Terrorism Charges
On June 4, 2006, CFRB Talk Radio in Toronto chose this news as the hot midday call-in topic. Not one person called in.
We don’t have any terrorists in Canada, right?
