Comrade Corn Cob

Until his death in 1952, Joseph Stalin was practically God in the Soviet Union. Everything that was believed and everything that was done had to conform to his wishes, even, as I described in another essay, music.

Stalin considered himself the ultimate authority in science, as well. He even had his own theory of genetics that was strikingly different from genetics as understood in the western world, and everywhere (even Russia) today. He copied his theory (Lysenkoism) from Comrade Trofim Lysenko. In this theory, things that happen to a plant or an animal during its life get passed on to the offspring. This would include the ability of crops, such as wheat, to endure cold temperatures if the seeds were frozen in cold temperatures. That is, you can create cold-hardy wheat by freezing the seeds. Millions of Russians and Ukrainians died in famines because of this stupid theory: when they planted frozen wheat seeds, the wheat simply died over the winter. (Wheat is often planted in the fall, then it produces seeds in the late spring.)

Lysenko was a fake scientist if there ever was one anywhere.

Another Soviet scientist, Nikolai Vavilov, was a real scientist. He studied genetics extensively and traveled the world to find seeds that carried the genetic basis of adaptation. He knew you had to breed cold-hardy wheat, not just freeze the seeds. Vavilov was a geneticist in the modern sense. In return for his scientific beliefs, he was imprisoned, where he died.

As soon as Stalin died, the Communists felt free, at last, to admit that they had created a “cult of personality” around Stalin, a cult that nearly destroyed the Soviet Union. The new leader, Nikita Kruschchev, was an enthusiastic promoter of agricultural research, after the pattern of Vavilov, not Lysenko. His enthusiasm was so great that he was called “Corn Cob.” When he visited America about 1968, one of his main interests was how Americans grew corn.

Once freed from the Stalin personality cult, conditions in the Soviet Union began to improve a lot, but not enough. The Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia began to enter the modern world of prosperity.

That is, until it entered another period of personality cult, this time centered on Vladimir Putin. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is, as nearly as most of us can tell, just a personal whim of Putin. Maybe in the future Russia will see Putin as an evil dictator, and as destructive to Russia as was Stalin. A lot of pain and suffering remains ahead before that can happen.

 

Would Single-Party Republican Rulership Be So Bad?

Happy Washington’s Birthday, everybody. I continue my series about the inevitability of a permanent Republican takeover of America. The previous essays were about how the Republicans will institute their permanent rule, and how the military will not stop it. In this third essay: would it be so bad? I think Republicans are evil, but could I live with them as our dictators? Many Americans would hate it but go along with it.

Most nations in the world have, officially or unofficially, single-party rulership. In China, it is official; the Communist Party. In Russia, it is unofficial; whatever Vladimir Putin wants. The Chinese people don’t like it, but they don’t want to incite civil unrest that would jeopardize their already unstable economic situation. The average Chinese citizen might say, let Xi Jinping do whatever he wants, let the Party leadership proclaim Him to be God or pretty close to it, an equal in the Celestial Kingdom to Mao Himself as of December 2021, just don’t hurt me. In Russia, it is literally a joke. Vladimir Putin was term-limited, but he traded off his rulership with Dmitry Medvedev, who did whatever Putin told him. Thus Putin was the ruler and yet still fit within the Russian constitution. Here is an actual joke overheard in Moscow: Putin and Medvedev were in a restaurant...

• Waiter (to Putin): What will it be?
• Putin: I’ll have the steak.
• Waiter: And what about the vegetable?
• Putin: He’ll have the steak too.

Russians snickered and got on with the business of hacking our computer systems. Of course, since they have utterly no hope of emerging from the rule of the Putin clique, they then go home and drink vodka.

So long as you don’t pull a Navalny in Russia or a Hong Kong in China, then the government doesn’t want to bother you. They have bigger fish to fry. When faced with the choice of whether to give up their lives for democracy or to let dictators swagger around, they choose the easy route. Patrick Henry has been dead a long time, folks. The only people who suffer much are the Uyghurs in China, and the ethnic minorities in Afghanistan, and…okay, it’s quite a list.

Occasionally, single-party rule can get out of hand. This happened most famously in World War II, in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Today, most people have heard of the murderous troops in Myanmar. But of the scores of undemocratic countries in the world, very few have become hell on Earth.

What this means is that if the Republicans establish a permanent dictatorship in America, most Americans will find some way of continuing their lives. If the Rulers won’t let you have off time to vote, they certainly won’t let you have enough time off to protest or revolt. After the Republicans have run the education system for a couple of decades, nobody will remember that life was any different. Already, Republicans have (by law in Oklahoma) prevented teachers from telling students about Native American genocide and the Tulsa Race Massacre. The sponsor of the law, who represents the city I work in, told a gathering at our university that he intended his law to prevent some people [read, white people] from feeling bad about what their race has done in the past. Before taking questions, he ran off. After a few years of Republican rule, white people will settle smugly into a benign cloud of satisfaction, and minorities will be working too hard to bother with trying to change the system. They won’t remember a time when votes actually mattered.

To me, personally, the most significant loss would be the death of patriotism. I was so enthusiastic about America when I was a kid. But now that the American flag has been taken over by the Republicans, and even Confederates consider themselves American patriots, I have become totally cynical about my country. I did not plan for this to happen.

 

Welcome Back to the Cold War

Today, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has the capability to destroy the United States, not just because of its nuclear weapons but because of enhanced delivery systems. The Cold War has returned. Those of you who were born after about 1990 have grown up in a world in which mutual assured destruction has always been a possibility but nobody ever thought about it much. The reason for this was because the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia focused more on its own economic development than on wanting to destroy America. Also, at that time, we had a president who was a moderate and thoughtful Republican (George H. W. Bush). But now, narcissistic egomaniacs are in control of both America (Donald Trump) and Russia (Vlad).

I grew up with the threat of nuclear destruction of the world. It didn’t happen. While it is unlikely to happen now or ever, the imminent possibility has returned. All that either Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin have to do is have a conniption fit and press the button.

Actually, it is not quite that simple. Only the president can authorize a nuclear strike. He broadcasts an encoded message to missile crews (the message, conveniently enough, is about as long as a tweet, Trump’s beloved form of communication). After that point, there is probably no chance to stop total nuclear annihilation. The five missile crews open safes to verify that the launch code sent by the president matches the one in the safe, to make sure that the order is not from a hacker. According to this report the five crews have to turn their keys at the same time. Then the report says, “There are five different keys, but only two need to be turned to launch the missiles.” Therefore, the president cannot launch a nuclear strike if everyone thinks he is crazy. But Trump has enough people who believe everything he says that it is not at all unthinkable for two keys to be turned to release The End of the World. And the Russian chain of command is even more mindlessly worshipful of Vlad than the American chain of command is of The Donald.

Evolution has given us brains that respond to imminent threat with quick and thoughtless attack. Not until the 1950s was it possible for such instinctual reactions to endanger the entire planet. For a few brief years, from 1990 until March 1, 2018, it remained possible but very unlikely. Now we are back to the panic mode. Living in a constant panic mode can erode your health. But in the evolutionary past, nobody lived long enough for this to be a problem.

We owe a big thanks to Trump and Putin for bringing the world back to the point in which the end of the world could begin at any moment.

A Simple Message, But One That Trump Cannot Understand

Here is a short entry. I just sent this message to the White House where I know it will never be read, or if it were read, would not be understood.

“I know that nobody ever reads these letters, so even if I had Russian state secrets to reveal in them, they would go unnoticed. Well, I have no Russian state secrets, but I can tell you something that is really going to help the Russians prevail over us. It is global warming, which you refuse to admit and refuse to do anything about. Global warming will enhance Russian agriculture. They will have longer growing seasons, and they will be able to grow wheat further north. Meanwhile, it will harm American agriculture. Global warming, to which America is the principal contributor, will boost Russian agriculture while harming ours. There are a few setbacks for the Russians—the heat wave and drought of 2011 caused Russia to suspend its wheat exports—but only temporary ones. So, thanks to global warming, America may soon be buying grain from Russia. Thanks a lot, Trump.”