Saturday, March 09, 2019

Fwd: "We and Trump" by professor Igor Melchuk



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: leonid lozentsvak 
Igor Melchuk is a renowned Soviet linguist and a dissident. He had a leading role among the founders of applied linguistics and machine translation in the USSR. After his forced emigration from the USSR in 1976, he taught till 2009 at the Universite de Montreal from where he retired in 2009. He is an academic with a huge scholarly output https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Mel%27%C4%8Duk

He does not ask to agree with him in his assessments of Trump but only to listen to his logic. If anything, his evaluation of Trump may be viewed, for the reason of fairness, as an opposite-end complement to the damning statements on Trump made by another famous linguist, Noam Chomsky.

From Wikipedia:

Igor Aleksandrovič Mel'čuk, sometimes Melchuk (Russian: Игорь Александрович Мельчук; Ukrainian: Ігор Олександрович Мельчук; born 1932), is a retired professor at the Department of Linguistics and Translation, Université de Montréal.

He graduated from the Moscow State University's Philological department. From 1956 till 1976 he worked for the Institute of Linguistics in Moscow. He is known as one of the developers of Meaning-Text Theory with the seminal book published in 1974. He is also the author of Cours de morphologie générale in 5 volumes.

After making statements in support of Soviet dissidents Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, (and Andrey Sakharov,) he was fired from the Institute, and subsequently emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976. Since 1977 he has lived and worked in Canada.


Igor Mel'čuk, Montreal, Canada               

     We and Trump

       Firstly, I will explain my title.

       'We' designates me and everybody else in the world who is spiritually and mentally close enough to me: those who are just now reading or could be reading this text with interest and understanding. These people are well-educated, honest, inherently good, altruistic citizens of various countries, who are not poisoned by an ideology. (I agree that my description of the collectivity that I call "we" is not quite precise, but—sorry!—I am unable to make it sharper.) It is these 'we' that I address, since the others would not listen to me anyway. 

       'Trump' is the sitting president of the USA; this is clear. 

       Now, 'and' is our attitude toward President Trump: the way we evaluate his administration (let it be emphasized: not Trump as a person, but his administration's actions), what we expect from this administration and what hopes we stake on it. This attitude is extremely important for the future of the Western World. This is so because the attitude of the masses creates a psychological force field, invisible but exceedingly powerful, which contributes to (or impedes) actions (emphasized once again: actions, not words) by the Trump administration. 

       Secondly, I'll clarify my reasons to write what I am writing. Many—maybe even the majority—of those whom I call 'we' and with whom I share all moral and humanitarian values are … anti-Trumpists. 'Your Trump is shit!', say numerous acquaintances, friends and even family members. This hurts and frightens me beyond words. I cannot keep silent, since such an attitude is extremely dangerous: a defeat of Trump's revolution and Trump's policies means the death of our civilization. I do not exaggerate: the West will be pushed back into the wildest barbar¬ism for many years, which for us on an individual level is forever. That is why I scream—to attract the attention of those who are ready to stop and think, that is, of those who do not want to remain a sausage full of what had been stuffed into it. I do not ask you to believe me or to agree with me; I only ask you to start thinking: to open your eyes and to switch on your logic. 

       For God's sake, do not call me 'moaner,' 'sour-face,' 'small believer,' and 'panicker,' as Comrade Lenin would have it: by nature, I am a cheerful optimist. But I see what I see, I have a strong sense of logic, and my conclusions are rather dim. The fact that Barack Hussein Obama had been elected president in 2008 showed the American people to be in a deep moral and spiritual paralysis: otherwise, how could it be possible to vote for Obama at the height of the Islamic onslaught on the civilized world—after the September 11 attacks? For Obama, ahidden Muslim and, at the same time, a parishioner of the pathological anti-Semite and black racist Jeremiah Wright? For Obama, a simple street propagandist, who had never managed anything in his life, a man with such an obscure past? This vote was a manifestation of complete irresponsibility—the behavior of unstable teens who finally got to have beer. But to re-elect this type in 2012, after his Cairo speech, after his desperate attempts to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, after all his assaults on Israel, after his deadly flirt with Iran and Russia, after inundating the USA with Mexican illegals? This is the behavior of mentally sick people who consciously refuse to see the reality. Weird? Yes, but we know many examples of mass folly in recent times: just remember elated crowds in Paris in 1914 after the Great War was declared; the Russian people who obediently fell under the feet of the Bolshevik mafia in 1917; but why mention the Russians, when the Germans—a people of the highest culture and spirituality—sensually accepted Hitler; the Japanese, whose barbarity in the war gives you goose bumps; the Cambodians, who auto-exterminated a quarter of themselves; Mao Zedong's "Cultural Revolution" with tens of millions of victims; the Rwandans with their machetes … But I have to stop, since it is impossible to enumerate every¬thing. 

       The degree of American folly became obvious in the electoral race of 2016: there were millions and millions of partisans for Hillary—in spite of her Benghazi, her uranium-Russian deal, her personal unprotected server used for state affairs, the dubious Clinton Foundation and even more dubious deaths around the Clintons (remember, for instance, Seth Rich, murdered in July 2016). Even worse, Bernie Sanders, who was suddenly found on the rubbish heap of history, ludicrous but nonetheless dangerous, also had millions of supporters. That is, the pandemic of the Leftist psychosis reached a frightening level. But—"Let there be light!"; and Trump appeared on the scene. The U-turn of an enormous ship—slow, difficult, groaning—started… 

 

       And the world? In the 20th century, the USA saved our civilization three times: USA's intervention stopped the bloody mess of World War I (and thus prevented several antihuman Bolshevik revolutions in Europe); it also ensured the victory of civilization in World War II (saving Europe first from Hitler's and then from Stalin's hordes); finally, it allowed us to win the Cold War (and see the collapse of the monstrous Soviet empire). Today, the USA is the only guarantor for the existence of the humanity in its reasonable form; the alternative to the USA is something like Pol Pot's Red Khmers. What, Red Khmers in the USA? Impossible to believe! However, the whole world did not believe its own eyes at the moment when Hitler grabbed the power. (Isn't it crazy that a figure of authority such as Thomas Mann himself was denying the German anti-Semitism even in 1943?) Today's Europe is like a spoiled youth who is allowed to do what¬ever he wants, who is not responsible for anything, who does not want to hear anything unpleas¬ant and who is looking for new and fresh pleasures. But by doing all this, he is cutting the branch he is sitting on! Over the course of half a century our world keeps moving nonstop toward abnormality and global permissiveness. Our civilizations is losing the will to retain its conquests, since this requires efforts and self-sacrifice, and today's trustafarians hate any effort…

       Same-sex "marriages" (two daddies, three mums, one and a half uncle—or maybe auntie?); hysterical women, assaulting an American senator in an elevator in connection with an assault allegedly committed—unsuccessfully!—35 years ago, so that the victim herself does not properly remember where or when (or whether) anything happened; Arab-Muslim enclaves all over Europe; a Marxist-Leninist Party on the latest elections in Quebec; the impossibility to publish a paper on mathematical statistics in a serious scientific journal because the paper deals with the distribution of geniuses vs. nuts among women – all these are links of the same chain. We should not be afraid of loud words: this swamp inevitably gives birth to torture chambers, execution basements and death camps! 

       Exactly this is the main target of the Trump administration. 

       President Trump himself—as a personality—is absolutely irrelevant: our women do not intend to marry him, and our men do not think of their daughters and sisters as his spouses; none of us dreams of having President Trump as an intimate friend. What matters is only what his administration does. And here is what it has already done: 

       • The US Embassy was moved to Jerusalem, the offices of the terrorist 'Palestinian' organiza¬tion in Washington closed; the administration stopped paying tens of millions of dollars to the notorious Relief Agency for Palestine 'refugees,' who multiply more quickly than cockroaches; military aid to Israel ensured. Jews were—finally!—recognized in the US as an ethnicity (funny, but this happened only now… Comrade Stalin is grinning wryly. ) Now the supporters of BDS and Jew-bashers in the US can be threatened with criminal persecution! No government in the whole world did something like this—never and nowhere. 

       • The Trump administration stopped the massacre of civil populations in Syria, put the foot don on Iran's and Russia's intervention, and is unswervingly supporting anti-Assad forces. 

       • It stopped supplying money to Tehran regime, saying a resounding "No!" to Iranian atomic bomb and ballistic missiles. 

       • It initiated the revision of unfair trade deals—first of all, with China, but with Europe and Canada as well. 

       • It braked Russia's expansion: without raising his voice, President Trump has deflated the Big Russian Don. 

       • It is resolutely curbing the illegal immigration that threatens the very existence of the USA as the First Democracy. (Isn't this ironic that a party that has chosen the annihilation of democracy in America as its major goal calls itself "democratic"? Recall that it was the Demo¬crats who were fighting for the preservation of the slavery and have thus largely contributed to the unleashing of the Civil War. Well, this is not irony, but the Leftist ordinary tactics. More than hundred years ago, the Lenin fraction of the Russian Social-democratic party, having lost an election—that is, being a minority, called themselves 'Bolsheviks,' which literally means 'Majoritarians'…) • It stopped raising salaries of federal employees (down with the big government!). 

       • It is fighting 'political correctness' decisively. 

       • It took several economic steps and thus dramatically reduced the unemployment, returned many companies to the US, and stimulated the stability of financial markets. 

       Even a small fraction of these successes guarantees President Trump and his administration an honorable place in history. 

       Now I can state my reason to write this text: I call on all those who are ready to think; I ask them to firmly support Republicans in the coming election and, more generally, in their everyday activities. Of course, you can reproach me for repeating the same again and again. True, but my words are a scream of pain that will not subside so long as the fire keeps burning me. 'If not us, then who? And if not now, then when?' [Rabbi Hillel, Jerusalem, the beginning of our era. He was a very wise man…].

 

                                           * * *

       No sooner have I finished this text than President Trump did something excellent again: as response to Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles in Syria he transferred to Israel several additional F-35 stealth fighters. And to boot he deployed a squadron of these nice ghost planes in Arab Emirates. Our best wishes to Comrade his Imperial Highness Putin! 

 

The Russian version: see «Мы здесь», № 575, 2018, October 15-27


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