When I was young I believed Ronald Reagan when he called Russia the Evil Empire.
I was pretty certain that he was right and that I was right.
I would let anybody who either wanted to know or didn’t want to know what I thought about the Soviet Union.
People still talk about Russia being evil today.
Nothing’s changed.
Of course it had officially collapsed in 1989, and the year was 1991, but who cares?
Then one day I got my comeuppance so to speak.
I was working in a clinic in Killeen, and I was talking to this elderly African-American doctor who was working alongside me.
I guess you could say he was African-American. He was actually from Trinidad.
So after I got telling him my spiel about the evils of the Soviet Union, he took me aside in the doctors lounge, and he patiently explained to me the following:
Look, Russia isn’t some back water. Russian people aren’t ogres or Neanderthals. This is a people and a culture that has contributed widely to the arts, music, ballet, physics.
I listened to him, then went home and thought about what he said.
It didn’t take too much thinking to realize that he was correct.
Russians had contributed through sports, gymnastics, ice-skating, ballet, and all sorts of fields. We had figures like Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov in ballet, Andre Sakharov in physics, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn in literature. In fact, our periodic table was invented by a Russian, Mendeleev.
I think that’s when I first began to realize that I’d been had politically.
This is what the old do to the young. This is what America’s propaganda machine does to young minds.
It takes about 20 years to walk around the political block. Assuming that you begin walking around at the age of 18 to 20, it takes until you are about 40 years old before you start to wise up.
Now, some people wise up earlier than others, but it took me about 20 years to realize that the older people, the people running the propaganda machine, were having their way with me.
In other words, I was their bitch.
So, gradually I started to evaluate politicians and the media pundits more critically.
I have since come to believe that everything in our main stream media is a nonstop lie all geared to maximizing profits for Corporate America. After all it’s Corporate America that owns the media
Well, I’m just telling you this so that you can know where I’m coming from and how I started to become the kind of person I am.
Maybe you think I’m crazy. I don’t think I’m crazy.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
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