Cairo, Egypt. Dobbs Ferry, New York. St. Petersburg & Moscow, Russia. January 2008.
Sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone to get a new understanding of the world. In the last month, I have ventured way beyond the familiar confines of Dobbs Ferry — traveling to the Islamic Caliphate in Egypt and the Russia Empire in St. Petersburg and Moscow – only to return home humbled and a little less naive.
What I learned is that I live in a bubble called America and that there are people and powers outside of our media’s reach. Also, that these people and powers don’t take us too seriously anymore. Part of the problem is that we are no longer ‘rich’ because the dollar has collapsed. Part of the problem is that we are in the last year of the most inept administration in our history and no one really cares what George W. Bush thinks or does, because he is already history.
In Egypt, our tour guide Ahmed mused that the world would be a better place once Islam had re-conquered Spain. This absurd notion struck him as completely reasonable as he prayed five times per day towards Mecca. Some of the men in Egypt prostrate themselves in prayer so much that they have bruises on their foreheads. In Ahmed’s mind, the Caliphate is only strong when secular and spiritual leadership are combined in one person or institution and he cited Iran as a good example. It will be hard to reconcile Islamic culture with Dobbs Ferry’s traditional of secular humanism, especially because we can’t read Arabic script.
In Russia, very few people speak English. How can America be the only superpower if all the peoples of the world don’t speak English? Pax Romana without Latin; impossible. Plus they have the gall (Gaul?) to use another alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet that I can’t read. I can understand the Chinese having a different way of writing but Russians are white people with tacky clothing, just like most Dobbs Ferrites. Russia will continue to be xenophobic — living in a bubble of peasant dresses and gold Baroque ballrooms — because isolation benefits the local elite. Case in point, the Mayor of Moscow vetoed subway signs in both Cyrillic Russian and Latin English, because Moscow is a Russian city.
Back in Dobbs Ferry, the debate rages over the hiring of an ex-Republican (now an independent) consultant by the newly elected Democratic Mayor, Scott Seskin. Allegra Dengler and the Jacobin wing of the Dobbs Ferry Democratic Committee are infuriated. The moderate elements in the Committee view Don Marra as ‘cover’. Mr. Marra comes from an old line Dobbs Ferry family and did a great job in neighboring Irvington rationalizing the village administration. His experience and professionalism have the recipients of Village patronage in fear of losing some of their prerequisites and privileges.
Frankly, both sides – the Jacobins and the patronage crowd are over-reacting, because the real fight is in Albany with the new and surprisingly inept ‘one-term’ Governor Eliot Spitzer. Apparently, the kind-hearted Republican Senate decided to punish Dobbs Ferry and the other Rivertowns for defeating the incumbent Nick Spano and electing an African-American, female, but more importantly, Democratic State Senator. This punishment was meted out in the form of a cut in school funding for Westchester County in favor of the long-suffering Republican districts on Long island.
So fellow Dobbs Ferrites, the world of the future will not be dominated by Bono leading an extra-governmental body like the United Nations acting as a benevolent older brother. Instead, the world will be dominated by four giant spheres of influence trying to expand their reach on Earth and in the heavens: (1) the Holy Roman Empire consisting of Europe, the Americas and India; (2) the Cyrillic Empire centered around Russia, Central Asia and the Balkans; (3) the Islamic Caliphate reaching from Morocco to Papua/New Guinea; and (4) the Chinese empire in East Asia. It will be a very dangerous world to live in because everyone will have the ‘bomb’ but no one will have the IQ to understand four very different alphabets at once – Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and Mandarin.