By Yuri Tuvim,
Almost a half century ago the mighty Soviet Union collapsed. Its legacy includes many things, from Sputnik to training Palestinian terrorists.
I strongly believe that by examining the Soviet failure we can learn something of vital importance for us.
There were many reasons for the demise of the Soviet empire, but one cause is often overlooked. As soon as the revolutionaries moved from the battle fields of the civil war into their offices, the seeds of the future collapse were planted. Bureaucracy was formed and started to grow. Stalin understood the potential of the bureaucratic machinery and used it effectively. He was godfather to the Soviet bureaucracy, and his bureaucrats worked efficiently because they were ruthlessly controlled to the point of extermination.
After Stalin’s death bureaucracy flourished. In a few years it acquired enough power to remove Khrushchev, who tried to reform the country by reshuffling and restructuring state and party machinery. Brezhnev never challenged the bureaucracy and allowed it to grow unchecked. The major achievement of the Soviet system was total alienation of the individual from the decision-making process, and from any participation in the life of country.
The USSR was like a pyramid where all the decisions were made on the top and handed down through the party bureaucracy. In such a system there was no place for any initiative by ordinary people. Moreover, any kind of initiative was regarded with suspicion and often was punished. Government ran everything from nuclear power plants to kindergartens.
Over the course of a few decades, this system created a new type of individual. Major traits of this Homo Sovieticus were the welfare mentality and antisocial behavior, the very traits that are now reasons why Russia is in such bad shape.
The USA is not in good shape, either. I am afraid we are losing our way of life. We are becoming more polarized and less involved in the life of our country. Bureaucrats and lawyers are becoming our masters. Rules and regulations are taking the place of common sense. Our congress has a historically low approval rating, but every State of the Union speech by the President solicits numerous applauses from the members of that dysfunctional and bitterly divided body. What is going on in our “leading democracy of the world”? Lawmakers are applauding but people on the street are very far from being optimistic.
The feeling that they are masters of their life is evaporating. Take elections. That process is now more and more guided by money. Incessant TV ads bombard us with primitive sound bites and distortions. Because of that voter participation in the midterm elections is 45% and only 65% for presidential elections. America has the lowest voter participation among democratic countries. This is estrangement, alienation. Soviet people were removed from the political process abruptly and completely; we are removing ourselves voluntarily and slowly, but this is only a quantitative, not a qualitative difference. The end will be the same – collapse. It will only take a longer time. The Soviet Union existed seventy years. It looks to me, that America follows the path of the life of democracies first outlined by the Scottish professor, Tyler in 1887:
A democracy is always temporary in nature: it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over lose fiscal policy which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the words greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about two hundred years. During these two hundred years these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
All these downward steps of the demise of a democracy have one root: the government. What is the government? Simply, the machinery needed to administer the task and needs of the country.
The government consists of three branches – legislative, executive and judicial. All three have a part in America’s decline but I would like to take the legislative branch first. The most appropriate word to characterize our Congress would be dysfunctional. However, it is dysfunctional only with issues our country is facing. Issues concerning the well being of members of Congress are addressed quite well.
Our lawmakers are excluded from Obamacare which they force on us without even reading its two thousand plus pages. And why bother? Their health care system is not affected. But beyond special health care they have other privileges. Let me list some others:
• Insider trading. Lawmakers are exempt from rules of the Security and Exchange Commission.
• Conflict-of-interest rules do not apply to legislators.
• Freedom of Information Act is also not applicable to them. Actually, their documents are as inaccessible as secret documents of the CIA. However, some of the CIA documents become declassified in time and congressional records never do.
• Whistleblower laws are not applicable to Congress.
It is impossible to catalog all the perks and misdeeds of our Congressmen in this short opinion.
For those of you who would like to know more, I recommend a thoroughly researched book by Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out.
I hope this book will prompt you to action if you are concerned about the future of our country. From this book you learn that there is no basic difference between legislators on both sides of the aisle. Corruption, crony capitalism, graft and blatant self-serving are blossoming on both sides. Lawmakers are so absorbed with their own needs they pay less and less attention to the problems of the country. That’s why only 10% of the population has faith in them. Nothing short of a groundswell of public action will be able to return it to a functioning body.
To make our Congress work more productively, we need to diminish the gap between the people and their representatives. Right now, that gap is quite wide and growing. Approval rating of Congress is historically low. The alienation of people from participating in the political process is increasing.
Both major political parties prefer not to notice that. In their lengthy platforms of almost thirty thousand words not a single sentence addresses the dysfunctional operation of Congress. To reverse the alienation and to reduce the role of money in elections is difficult but possible.
I asked dozens of people from all walks of life what they think about the implementation of term limits for members of the Congress. Their response was overwhelmingly positive. Not one person was against it.
So, people are for term limits but their representatives, with a few exceptions, prefer not to notice. This is not responsive Democracy.
In conclusion:
1) Refusing to endorse and implement term limits, politicians reveal that they put their own interests before the needs of people.
2) Any party which proclaims the intention to implement term limits will overwhelmingly win the next election.
Hi, Yamit. You said,
“Point #2 Tyre!! Why were whole chapters in the Tanach devoted to and mentioning Tyre?? I think rather than injecting Trump in your celestial drama I would look to and compare America today with Tyre.. ”
America, in its present spiritual and material state, is described by many prophecies, even though those same prophecies were originally applied to Israel and Judah. The applicable maxim is, “If the shoe fits, wear it!”
This isn’t about “my celestial drama”.
Michael S Said:
Point#1 The G-d of the Jews is the G-d of History. He is; He exists; He dominates and controls. He shapes the present and decrees the future. “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth…” Thus the Torah begins its message to the Jew to let him know that the Jewish G-d exists as a real entity and not some intellectual plaything. He created the past and He controls the present and He wills the future. The Jewish G-d is the G-d of creation, the G-d of History past and future.
The G-d of History, the G-d of the Jewish people, called the world into being for one reason only and that was for the sake of the Jewish people and the Torah of Israel. All that occurs, all the eruptions of wars and catastrophes, the rise and fall of empires, have no meaning except that they affect the fortunes or misfortunes of the Jewish people. The Jewish nation is indeed, the heart of the world and there is no reason for the existence of empires, kings, rulers, masses or systems aside from their reaction to the Jewish people. This is the meaning of the destiny of the Jew and that destiny is a guaranteed one.
There is a guarantee, a solemn oath, a surety, a divine bond that the Jewish people cannot be ever destroyed but rather that they and their G-d will emerge in days to come triumphant over the evils and the foolishness of all other nations. Zion will and must emerge as the mount to which all peoples will turn and the Jewish L-rd will be the One before Whom all knees bend. Jerusalem must be rebuilt as the throne of the world and the Exile must end with all Jews returning.
That final day will come and the beginning of the final era is upon us. The one who doubts this is not a scoffer; he is blind. The rise of the Jewish State from the ashes and dung heap of history; the return of the people scattered and ground into the dust; the reemergence of a language, consigned to the libraries and antiquities of the Vatican and the House of Study; the stranger-than-fiction, miraculous victories over overwhelming enemies thirsting for bloody destruction and holocaust – these are the first steps into the final chapter of Jewish triumph and Heavenly kingdom.
Point #2 Tyre!! Why were whole chapters in the Tanach devoted to and mentioning Tyre?? I think rather than injecting Trump in your celestial drama I would look to and compare America today with Tyre..
America in the Bible
Can ancient prophecies about Israel be true? Is the Bible true or relevant today?
This video will put those questions to rest!!
@ Reader:
Hi, Reader. You said,
“What is next? Forced vaccinations, forced detentions, RFID chipping, no-cash economy, universal draft, the young generation forced to work for pennies without environmental regulations in the factories that will come back from China to MAGA?!”
It doesn’t take a prophet, to see that this is the direction we’re heading. George Orwell foresaw it during WWII, when he worked in the service of the British government; and he wrote about it in 1949 in his book “1984”.
These things are already with us. Have you seen the BBC series “The Last Enemy”, about a British government spying on everyone? It was written as “science fiction”, but all the technology in it was state-of-the-art at the time it was produced.
The technology has changed over the centuries, but none of this is really new. Rome ultimately collapsed partly because the common people could no longer support the bloated bureaucracy. It has happened, it is happening and it will happen.
@ yamit82:
HI, Yamit. I know that passage well. What is it you want me to see in it?
You know the background of it: The northern kingdom of Israel, under the House of Omri, formed a marriage alliance with the Phoenicians, the most powerful maritime empire of their day. They also made peace with the kingdom of Judah, and cemented that deal also with a marriage. Israel under Ahab was a powerful kingdom, probably the most powerful it had ever been. The price of this power was the prostituting of its religion to Jezebel and her pagan Sidonians. Great prophets rose up to reprove Ahab and Israel of their sin — Elijah and Elishah among them; but Israel continued in its pagan worship. Finally, God rose up Jehu to destroy Ahab’s house, Jezebel and the priesthood of Baal.
If you don’t think America has abandoned its God, and turned to worship the gods of others — the gods of materialism and hedonism — then I suppose you can’t find any parallel here. I do. At any rate, you asked me and I answered.
About America’s decline, I agree with what everyone before me has commented. Except maybe about Jehu. He was an overtly repressive ruler who did not have the “sophistication” of American Presidents, Congress, the Supreme Court, etc.
While the prophets decried the Israelites idol worship, “objectively” the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were small states that had very little chance of avoiding conquest by massive empires such as Assyria and Babylon, with their vast armies and resources. By contrast, the United States is disintegrating not because of foreign conquest but because of the massive corruption pervading our country on all levels, the complete rejection of “conventional” morality or any permanent moral code, and yes, the increasingly bureaucratic, oversized of our government and its close ties to big business. While the ancient Israelites fell to foreign conquerors, the U.S. has “conquered ” itself.
@ Michael S:
Both China and the Soviet Union before their respective revolutions were backward feudal countries the majority of whose population were poor peasants who were used to centuries of absolute monarchy and their cultures are (still) vastly different from the Anglo-American culture.
To demand of them the same behavior as of Englishmen or Americans is to have no understanding of what these cultures are all about.
The United States is not the same country it was 40 years ago. Since 9/11 the power in the US has increasingly concentrated in the hands of professional politicians and the BIG business and the people’s freedoms have been slowly taken away from them. This process sped up after the fall of the USSR.
We are allowed to vote every 4 years for one of the two candidates that the professional rulers choose and what else?
This “pandemic” stuff is absolutely amazing in this respect – the country’s 330 million people are ordered around like little tin soldiers and they happily OBEY!
What is next? Forced vaccinations, forced detentions, RFID chipping, no-cash economy, universal draft, the young generation forced to work for pennies without environmental regulations in the factories that will come back from China to MAGA?!
I am not looking forward to this, for sure.
I wasn’t planning to spend the rest of my life like this watching the once free country turn into a dictatorship.
@ Michael S:
Trump = Jehu???? You have a very vivid and christlological imagination
Melachim II – II Kings – Chapter 9
@ Reader:
Hi, Reader.
All that you said is true: All world empires rise and fall, as if by clockwork. I merely pointed out that if Yuri Tuvim’s analogy to the Soviet Union pertained to anyone, it did so to China, much more than the US.
@ yamit82:
HI, Yamit.
Jehu rose to power from obscurity, overthrew the dynasty of Ahab and called upon the people to throw Jezebel over the wall. Substitute Trump for Jehu, Bill Clinton for Ahab and Hillary for Jezebel, and you have it.
Jehu was able to clean the Baal worshippers out of the government, but could not change the heart of the Israelites. They continued to worship their calf, and were overthrown by the Assyrians a few years later.
Michael S Said:
What is the connection to King Jehu?
@ Michael S:
If you look at the history of some of the well-known empires, you will see that the seeds of their demise (even if the decline takes centuries and not decades) start to grow when the government bureaucracy gets in bed with (big) business and the politicians lose their brakes (as Yuri Tuwim describes in his article), so to speak, with accompanying pride and arrogance.
This is true even for the USSR if you look closely enough.
To give an example, the senators of the Late (pagan) Roman Empire belonged to just 12 (twelve) families, and even Cicero was a shipping magnate.
“The USSR was like a pyramid where all the decisions were made on the top and handed down through the party bureaucracy. In such a system there was no place for any initiative by ordinary people. Moreover, any kind of initiative was regarded with suspicion and often was punished. Government ran everything from nuclear power plants to kindergartens.”
This describes the China PR very well. One fruit of the Soviet system was the Chernobyl disaster; and one fruit of the Chinese system is the Wuhan virus.
Concerning Tuvim’s observations about America, there is some truth to them. I think a better parallel to the US, however, is Israel under Jehu.