It’s New Year’s Eve in a tony East Coast suburb.
“Old Shchur must have done well this year,” declares Danko, swirling his cabernet. “He used to serve plonk from Modesto. Now it’s Napa Valley, and the best.”
“You’ve got to admit the economy’s doing well,” replies Romko. “Robust growth, low interest rates, and the Dow is up. Even we Ukes have come up in the world. Globalization is our friend.”
“It’s not floating all boats,” counters Danko. “Look at those miners and steelworkers in the Rust Belt. They’re not even looking for jobs. That’s why they don’t show up in the statistics. They’re getting addicted to opioids, getting divorced and killing themselves. There’s a lot of descendants of our old immigrants there… And guess who they’ll vote for next year.”
“And for good reason. But you and I must be living in different universes. Because in reality, those workers have been doing better these past three years. Employment is up, wages are up… Now that we’re playing tough with China and putting up tariffs, deregulating our industries, limiting immigration, our workers have a chance. We needed a little creative destruction.”
“It’s destruction all right, but I wouldn’t call it creative,” interjects Irka, drifting in from Shchur’s dim library. The federal government isn’t just a bunch of bean-counting bureaucrats. Decades of hard work have been thrown to the winds. Environmental protection, health and safety regulations…”
“Besides, immigrants aren’t taking away those jobs,” adds Danko. “Immigrants have been doing the hard, dirty work that no one else wanted to do since the Irish potato famine. The guys who mow our lawns and wash our windows didn’t take those jobs away from industrial workers in the Rust Belt.”
“As if either party cared,” muses Irka. “There’s no dignified work for Americans with a high-school education, and you can’t just re-train them for high-tech jobs. Wall Street and Big Tech love globalization, because it means they can abandon entire communities if there’s cheaper labor in Asia. And Wall Street and Big Tech fund both parties. The Republicans are fixated on economic growth and investors’ bottom line. The Democrats, who used to support labor, are fixated on the oppressed minority du jour. No one cares about fat middle-aged white men who don’t fit into the new economy.”
“So, who would you vote for?” asks Danko.
“No one from the big parties,” answers Irka. “You know how elections work. They pick the candidate and the program that’s most likely to win the election. Then they forget the program and start delivering on the promises they made to their donors. I’ll just vote for the best local candidates. Democracy can only be local. Jefferson knew that. The Zaporozhian Sich knew that!”
“Well, you know the litmus test for a presidential candidate. Is he good for Ukraine?”
“Or she,” Irka reminds him. “Or they. But who’s good for Ukraine? Not someone who doesn’t think it’s a real country.”
“Or someone who thinks socialism is still a workable idea,” points out Romko. “But we’ll see how the impeachment trial goes. If you can call it a trial.”
“Unfortunately, you can’t. But how can you not impeach someone who’s playing Russia’s game? Or at least put him out of the running in November?”
“But impeachment is part of Russia’s game too,” argues Romko. “It makes us look weak and stupid. Just watch – next year, while we’re fixated on impeachment, Putin will pull another fast one. Maybe in Ukraine.”
“Professor Schmetterling thinks Putin won’t last,” remarks Irka.
“He said that ages ago.”
“And it’s still true.”
“It’s not just Putin,” sighs Danko. “Russia won’t stop until they’ve taken over Ukraine.”
“I think they’d rather just control it, subverting its government, fomenting chaos,” observes Romko. “And keeping it out of NATO. Let’s face it, NATO is an appendage of America. The Russians want to be a big player. They want to cut us down to size. And whatever happened to the multi-polar world? Our liberals used to criticize America being the world’s policeman. When we tried to stop communism in Vietnam, they said you can’t spread democracy from the barrel of a gun. Now we’ve had troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for how many years, and what have we accomplished?”
“I don’t think America can spread democracy in the Middle East or Africa,” admits Danko. “But it should defend democracy where it already exists.”
“That idea’s past its prime,” says Romko bitterly. “We can’t be the only superpower. We’ve got to share power with Europe, India, even undemocratic regimes like China…”
“And Russia?” snaps Danko. “That’s not good news for Ukraine.”
“Ukraine doesn’t have to be an American proxy,” comments Romko. “Our politicians think they can tell Ukrainians whom to investigate or not investigate, whom to fire, whom to elect. It’s shameful. Ukraine needs to stand on her own feet. And she belongs in Europe.”
“But Ukraine can’t trust the Europeans,” Danko points out. “They don’t care about Ukrainians. They’re certainly not going to stick their necks out for them simply because they have better ‘European values’ than Europe itself.”
“Remember,” Romko adds, “Europe isn’t even a nation. And the EU is coming apart. It’s lost its focus. It’s an unelected bureaucracy that tells national electorates what to do. And no one benefits but the global elite. Your Polish coalminer in Silesia resents them for the same reasons his cousin in Pennsylvania resents people like us.”
“And Putin exploits that,” mutters Irka. “He wanted Brexit, and he got it.”
“We scream about populism,” remarks Romko, “but one man’s populism is another man’s democracy. People want to run their own affairs, without Brussels telling them how many centimeters long they have to grow their cucumbers. The problem isn’t illiberalism. The problem is ill liberals.”
It is nearing midnight. A grinning Shchur approaches with a tray of shot glasses of clear, cold horilka. And they toast a new year filled with dissension and doubt.
Andrew Sorokowski can be reached at [email protected].