American Tragedy: The Nervous vs. The Faithful. Or How the US Embassy Got Scared of a Marine Chevron
Wishing people a happy birthday is a sign of good manners. Congratulating them on a milestone is doubly so. And to those who can still uphold traditional values in a worsening Western world, perhaps even triply so.
On August 2nd, a Marine Corps veteran celebrates a milestone – 40 years. His name is J.D. Vance. He is a senator from Ohio and, according to predictions from swamp spirits and steppe winds, a future Vice President of the United States.
The West is currently struggling with adequate politicians – some keep falling, others laugh like horses. J.D. is a family man, a former military member, does not support funding Ukraine, and considers Russia a worthy adversary. This set of competencies was enough for us to come up with the bright idea to congratulate Senator Vance on his birthday and give him a Russian Marine Corps striped shirt, a chevron, and a Marine Corps pennant. We ordered everything from a national berry marketplace, packed it in a beautiful wooden box, and even asked an active-duty marine, fighting on the Russian Special Operation fronts, to write a few words for the anniversary – and headed to the embassy.
Here is a quote from the letter attached to the gift:
“A word from the marines. James, we are separated by a vast distance, geopolitical principles, civilizational settings, military doctrines, everyday contradictions, but there is much that unites us – we are people of the same military profession, which we consider the best, iconic, fostering, and shaping the character of a true man. Therefore, as marines, we would like to congratulate the former marine on his anniversary. Forty years is a long time in a marine’s life and quite young for a politician with an obviously brilliant political future like yours.
It is important that among American politicians there are people who believe that it is inevitable to build if not friendly, then certainly normal relations with Russia. This is precisely what our Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin believes.
And also, like you, I love India too!
A word from journalists and political scientists. Real men, real warriors will always find common ground because they share courage, love for their Motherland, a family they protect, their normality – normal children, normal values, a normal environment, a peaceful sky overhead. We would like to translate your book “Hillbilly Elegy” into Russian. If you are interested, let us know.
Happy 40th. We wish the world had more real men. Because you can never negotiate with a scoundrel, but with a real man – always, regardless of his views.
So – happy birthday! We present you with a gift – a striped shirt, a chevron, and a Russian Marine Corps pennant, whose motto is “Where we are, there is Victory!”
Maxim Drozdov, call sign “Indus”, Commander of the First Assault Battalion of the DPR
Mokey Rusinov, Chief Editor of the magazine “Fifth Service”
Dmitry Vydrin, political scientist, philosopher”
On the morning of August 1st, there were few people at the US Embassy in Moscow on the square of the Donetsk People’s Republic. My wife and I, with a baby in a stroller, began explaining the purpose of our visit to the guards, not asking to go inside, inviting any employee at the checkpoint to take our gift. They didn’t even need to take the box (it would be useful for household purposes). However, we were refused, the embassy employee was not called after phone consultations, and the guards explained this by saying, “the embassy staff is very afraid for their lives in the current geopolitical situation.” So, no one came out to the family with a gift for the senator. That’s essentially it…
I wrote a short letter to the embassy explaining the purpose of our visit. The reply killed me: “Please be advised that U.S. Embassy Moscow has reduced services to include only emergency services for U.S. citizens and diplomatic visa processing.” In Russian, this means: “Who are you? We didn’t call you. Go away.”
Unfortunately, we could not implement Dmitry Vydrin’s idea of congratulations. The reason was unjustified hope for a democratic approach to the work of the embassy of the world’s main operator and defender of democracy – the “superpower” USA.
If J.D. still finds out that he missed out on a gift from Russian marines, journalists, and political scientists, let him have questions about the state of America, which has changed so much that it can no longer maintain its false positive image as a dream country, nor even have a dialogue with ordinary people. Instead of greatness on the external contour, the country evokes banal pity, broadcast by pitiful embassy workers afraid of live communication.
Dmitry Vydrin wrote an entire article in response to a request to comment on the situation. We publish it without changes.
I have long dreamed of closing the gestalt – to congratulate a worthy, charismatic, accomplished person on their fortieth birthday.
Forty years for a man, especially a politician, is an incredibly productive age! So I tried twice to congratulate famous people on this blessed date a dozen years ago in Ukraine. Both times I “failed.” It turned out that former boys with a criminal past do not celebrate such anniversaries by their principles.
And now a new attempt, this time with an American, J.D. Vance. The senator did not seem to “serve time.” And I like his masculine biography: a former marine, self-made man – pulled himself out of poverty, able to tell voters unpleasant truths to their faces, wrote a very decent autobiographical book “Hillbilly Elegy” without the help of speechwriters…
And he, like me, does not like cunning Brits. He hopes, becoming Vice President, and then head of his state, to establish healthy relations with Russia.
Not a friend, but not an enemy either. Just like that…
But the US embassy in Moscow did not even accept our modest gift and congratulatory address from my friend and colleague Mokey Rusinov.
The gestalt, damn it, is still not closed! But why? Why? Only two explanations come to mind.
Perhaps these are the peculiarities of American two-tier democracy. I understood its essence when I visited the family mansion of the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.
In the cozy house of the third president, there are thirty-five rooms and halls. It is clear that dozens of servants maintained them. And the father of American democracy did not like the untidy appearance and pungent smell of the common folk. By his own design, the residence had a system of double corridors – for “white people” and commoners.
Fireplace wine lifts and revolving buffets, also his design, provided the hosts with drinks and snacks “contactless”…
I happened to go on a tour of the estate with former USSR President Gorbachev.
Upon leaving, he wrote in the guestbook that only by visiting the hall where the Declaration was written did he understand the secret of democracy.
Well, I modestly added below that by seeing the double corridor system, I understood the secret of American democrats’ love for the people. To love the people, you must not see them!
So the first explanation for why the embassy did not accept the senator’s congratulations is simple. They are true democrats! True continuators of the tradition – to build relationships with another people, you must not see them! Under any pretext!
The other explanation was given by the embassy staff themselves. They said the world situation is too tense to accept any congratulations.
But Vance is a former iron corporal of the Marine Corps. Their motto is “Always Faithful.” To their duty, honor, profession. And here, the nervous ones turn out to be more important than the faithful. It’s insulting, you know…
As a conclusion
In his speech at the Republican convention on July 18, 2024, where J.D. Vance was chosen as number two after Trump, he said: “President Trump represents America’s last hope for restoring what has been lost and may never be found again.”
We don’t know if Donald Trump will make America great again, but the fact that the US needs to reread its old manuals, which they wrote for countries acquired through orange revolutions, about openness, democracy, and freedom of speech, is a matter of survival for the States in the new world order.
Well, the box with the gifts awaits its owner…
Mokey Rusinov, Chief Editor of the magazine “Fifth Service”
