Cossacks Beat My Grandfather
The Tsar lied to him. It gave him an innate sense of skepticism toward the Establishment. It's a skepticism all peasants shared. Those peasants were a lot smarter than us.
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall) said his grandma was too busy getting raped by Cossacks to make him any presents.
At about the same time, my grandpa was busy getting beaten up by Cossacks.
Those mongrels policed Russia's southern border for the Tsar and got away with pretty much anything.
Fortunately, I think my grandpa only got beaten once, and I don't think it was too brutal. He had no scars and he lived to tell the tale. But he didn't tell too many tales. He didn't say much at all. Keeping your mouth shut was something you learned young in Tsarist Russia with its web of secret police.
He never saw the Statue of Liberty. He came in through Baltimore, where he saw a black man on the dock, eating a meat sandwich. The sight crushed him.
The Tsar told the German peasants along the Volga that they shouldn't come to America because they'd be second class citizens. The black man, the Tsar explained between punches from the Cossacks, ruled America. My grandpa didn't believe him. Then he saw that black man eating a sandwich with meat.
Only the ruling class could afford meat in Russia.
You understand my teenage grandpa's dot-connecting angst.
When I was taking classes to convert to Catholicism, I challenged the traditional and devout priest: "I read that the rule against Catholics eating fish on Fridays came from the fishing lobby's pressure." He chuckled and said, "Could be."
I thought I was landing a helluva punch. I'm not sure it even glanced. The good priest understood the difference between discipline and dogma. He also loved the Church but not the special interest groups who'd been causing it problems since at least the 9th century when thug lobbyists installed reprobates as pope and told everyone they were holy.
The Tsar lied to my grandpa about pretty much everything. If pressed, the Tsar probably would've told my grandpa that the Cossacks didn't beat him.
Dishonesty is inherent in any centralized government. If you can't see the guy with power, you can safely assume he's abusing it, just like you can assume a lecherous neighbor will try to bang your wife if you're not around.
And if that lecherous neighbor has enough power over you, he'll be reckless about it. If he bumps into you while walking out of your bedroom buckling his pants, he'll tell you he was just helping your wife unjam a pipe.
Authoritarianism and gaslighting go together like inebriation and liquor.
If someone is slurring his words, he's been drinking, and if someone is gaslighting, he has power.
My peasant grandfather dealt with it by not believing anything he read in the newspapers, figuring it was all gaslighting propaganda from the government and its special interest groups.
When the Cossacks came around, they made boys take off their pants to see if they were Jewish. Jewish boys got really bad beatings while Alvey Singer's grandma got raped. That's why grandpa didn't have his sons circumcised.
My father was born in 1933, in Detroit. My history tends to haze, but I don't think there were many Cossacks around.
When dealing with the Establishment, one can never be too careful.
Email this post to a friend