Friday, September 2, 2011

Chickens Which Ran in All Directions
Have Become Chickens Come to Roost (XIII)
A picturesque view from the road.
Latvia is about to get leaders who cannot lead anyone, anywhere, who have no plans for the future, no idea where they come from.

As for the future, none of the current slate of political candidates has risked his or her neck arguing or speculating about a future that has a chance to create a society for long-term survival. This is why they have no real politik projections, only cynical and self-serving plans. As for the past of Latvia, the Latvian leadership lacks any real sense of it, leaving it begin (and die) with the declaration of Latvia’s independence in 1918.


For all of three generations now [70+ years since Karlis Ulmanis demise and his decommission of Latvians as a self-conscious and self-assertive community (1939)] the Latvian community—both in Latvia and abroad—has slithered about its own slippery gore, never quite able to manage an analysis of what happened to create circumstances that this should be so.


This writer has written about the past of the Latvian people in many blogs. His major conclusion may be summed up in a few words: a forest people are not a peasant people.


No doubt, the Latvian people have been forest and field dwellers, farmers, both. However, the Latvian roots in the forest, which is at the core being of Latvians (or proto-Latvians) have been deliberately erased by a myth that forced to the fore the story about Latvians slogging the plowed field as an exploited peasant http://uploads4.wikipaintings.org/images/vincent-van-gogh/sketches-of-peasant-plowing-with-horses-1890.jpg!xlMedium.jpg .


An afternoon sun

In other words, the Proto-Latvians, a people once politically free and democratic, with a language that celebrated the endearing word, with community and word protected from violence by the forests about them [which forest encouraged socio economic equality] were turned into uncertain democrats, urban dwellers no longer able to see the panorama of the whole (present, past, or future), but who present themselves as a demoralized pack of ‘elites’ and politicians of Riga. They are all happily setting the ship of state ever more adrift into the plastic rubbish at the centre of our planet’s seas.


While the Latvian people are correct to rate the occupation of the Soviet Union (in 1939 http://www.worldology.com/Europe/images/wwii_1939_ussr_baltic.jpg ) as a cruel blow to their existence as a community, this writer has been constant in pointing to the betrayal of the Latvian community by Karlis Ulmanis as a major contributing factor to the community’s demoralization, not to mention perversion of the state.


An unfortunate and no doubt once confused President Karlis Ulmanis is today variously accused of having  been a fascist dictator and/or a martyr to the Soviet Gulag—factors that play a part in what happened. However, the real “occupation” was accomplished by Ulmanis himself, when with no protest against an event that necessitated the shedding of his blood (if he was to avoid sheeding the blood of Latvians), he surrendered his personal job—presidency by dictat—for a job as an agronomer in the Soviet Union. Yes, Ulmanis died in a Gulag as the result of an outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa , not because the Soviets had scheduled him for execution there. Whatever the ideals of President Ulmanis may have been, his last acts denied them all.


While political science recognizes such an event as “founding violence” http://www.bluffton.edu/~mastg/Girard.htm , Ulmanis is responsible for creating a decommissioning violence, a mortal (potentially) psychological blow http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/38434/Trauma.pdf , which has been in effect since Ulmanis' nation-negating deed.


As a result of Ulmanis decommissioning of the State of Latvia (in a moral sense, one proud of itself), he created psychological conditions that have not been overcome to this day. This is not to negate the spirit of the Latvians who were outraged by the occupation and joined the Germans in attacking the Soviets. It is true that later (when easy guesses were belatedly acknowledged) the Latvians also turned against the German military. However, what needs highlighting is the fact that as a result of Ulmanis’ betrayal of the self-esteem of the community through his personal actions rather than acting through communal deliberations, the Latvian people, suddenly decommissioned psychologically, reacted to war and its violence emotionally as if it were liberating. The leaderless nation did not act with deliberation and rationally as it ought to have done.

 

As a result of the communal emotional state left to the winds and communal affairs not a matter of communally deliberated decision-making, the reputation of the Latvian legionnaires became exposed as much to eroneous action as to excuse-making that never examines the root cause of the psychologically induced uncertainty that haunts the psyche of Latvians today. History slip-slides as shallow men will let it. Certainly, a negation of Latvian history, whether in the far- or near-time, suits the current political elite and their sponsors.


To conclude: It is not the community-nation that is the concern of the current political elites. It is not the nation as a culturally sustainable entity that interests them. What is in the forefront of interest today are narrow and self-serving political schemes.


One ought not be surprised that the future of Latvia is never envisaged as, say, the land which may give Europe its future capital. It is well for the existing system that Latvia remain at the system’s periphery, where it can be exploited as borderlands generally are. That is also where the lands of the dead are traditionally found.

The road turning right.

Jaņdžs, aka Eso Antons Benjamiņš, 2. september, 2011-09-02.

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