"America - love it or leave it", says a faded bumper sticker on an Oregon redneck's pickup truck. Well, I haven't left yet...

I became a naturalized U.S. citizen not long ago. To tell the truth, it wasn't an easy decision to make. First of all, the United States of America, definitely, is not my ideal of a harmonious society. This is not the place to feel comfortable. Rather, quite the reverse. Therefore, it is not the place where I would be happy to live for the rest of my life. Certainly not! All the more, that I came here six years ago through pure misunderstanding. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware then well enough of what I could expect here. What kind of reality I would confront. It happened...

I was born and had lived for most of my life in Lithuania, which at the time was occupied by the former Soviet Union. Like many of my compatriots, I became involved in the resistance movement since I was a teenager. Nonconformism and resistance to oppression became the way of life for me. I was harshly persecuted for that by the KGB numerous times. At that time Russian communism seemed to me to be the only absolute incontestable evil in the world. Odious Ronald Reagan with his silly rhetoric about an "evil empire" was among my favorite people. Generally, I had very limited understanding about other systems.

I haven't change my opinion about Russian communism, but now I don't think that it was the only evil system in this world, and that now all the evil is finally gone. I see that the American variant of capitalism is not the lesser evil, and in some aspects it is even worse than Russian communism was. In fact, Soviet communism wasn't even an alternative to capitalism, but rather only a totalitarian form of capitalism or "state-capitalism".

I was an active participant from the very beginning in the "singing revolution" for Lithuania's independence. As a consequence of that I was exiled from my country by the Soviet authorities. I lost my citizenship and had to look for some place on this planet where I could settle for, who knows, maybe the rest of my life.

There were a lot of uncertainties and doubts in my head at the moment that I had to make a choice, a decision where to go. When, after spending some time in various places in Europe, I was offered possibility of going to the U.S. as a "political refugee", I agreed. Now, I understand that such a decision was a mistake, very irresponsible and flippant. But at that moment I was simply tired of prolonged uncertainty, and I didn't have much time to think before saying "yes".

To tell the truth, my expectations before coming to this country were not very much different from the reality that I've found here. No, I certainly didn't have any rosy illusions. I knew, more or less, that America wasn't at all such "paradise on earth" as so many naive people in other countries still believe. Being a journalist by profession and dissident by vocation, I was very persistent in finding and learning the truth. Therefore, I usually had a little bit more objective information than ordinary Soviet people could have. Still, it wasn't enough to form a clear picture about America and capitalism in general.

People in the former Soviet Union were exposed to a tremendous amount of, I would say, very primitive communist propaganda. Not many believed that propaganda, and, of course, nobody was taking it at its face value. Needless to say, Russian propaganda at that time was telling us a great deal of bad things about the United States. But because it was told by the enemies, we Lithuanians didn't accept what we heard or read. Most people simply rejected in their minds all the negative information as a lie.

Now, after six years of living here in this country, this society, I understand very well that all those bad things which Soviet propaganda told us about America, in most cases weren't lies at all. More than that, Soviets gave us, perhaps, just a little particle of the entire truth about all the negative sides of American reality, how things really look here. We heard about homelessness and unemployment, about consumerism and "trash culture", about violent crime and racial problems, but all that information was very superficial. As for me, I didn't find it convincing at all. At the same time people were watching Hollywood movies, and could see another sort of propaganda with quite a different image of America and American life. So we were subjected to two different propagandas simultaneously. Most people simply didn't know which one to believe. I didn't believe either one. Searching for the unbiased information on one's own, I realized that reality in the United States isn't very attractive, but unfortunately, I had no idea how bad it is.

After we arrived in this country in July of 1989, we had an opportunity to experience all the "charms" of American reality right away. While living in New York City, we could see all the horrors of the urban jungle in America. We were exposed to enormous danger every single day for over a year. Thank God, somehow we survived New York. After that followed three long years of boring hell in the neighboring "garden state" of New Jersey - painfully dull life of American suburbia. Day after day, month after month we learned more and more how to survive here, in this society, how to fight this hostile system. Little by little I've become a dissident again. Last year we moved again. This time across the continent from New Jersey to Oregon. Eugene, the town where we now live, despite pretending to look different, in my opinion, is pretty much the same as anywhere else in America. Perhaps, just on a smaller scale.

So, after six years of experience, I can say today that the real United States of America exceeded all my bad expectations. Reality here is much worse than I expected and than Soviet propaganda was describing.

I see that in this cutthroat society, based on a "greed is good" philosophy, unlimited profit seeking, selfishness, fraud and greediness for money dominates everywhere. Money is absolutely the bottom line for everything. In America, the rich are truly rich and the poor are hopelessly poor. In my opinion, the United States today has the most advanced system of private tyranny. Private corporations have enormous power in this country and they take advantage of an apparently legal slave labor, terribly exploiting the working class people. Corporate bosses earn millions while workers struggle to survive without living wages. From my point of view, the majority of jobs here today are still extremely exploitative. The U.S. minimum wage is ridiculous. Working for $5 an hour is slavery and nothing else. Therefore, poor people and homeless people make up a significant portion of the population in this country. Millions of hard-working Americans live permanently at the edge of poverty. There is no doubt that economic injustice is the most important issue of today's America. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and all the people in the middle are just falling down. I see that people in this society are secondary to corporate power and profits. Freedom for market dominates over freedom for people. In fact, at least 80 percent of Americans are simply robbed by this exploiting system. I've noticed how American corporate propaganda always surely emphasizes that in European countries - "welfare states"- people have to pay a much higher taxes. In fact, taxes in most of Western Europe, even in Scandinavia, are just slightly higher than an average 34 percent of income Americans pay. The main thing is what people receive in return for their taxes. In European social- democracies everybody has a "cradle-to-grave" comfortable feeling of security and care. Question: What are citizens of this country getting for their tax dollars? Answer: Next to nothing! People's taxes support armament instead of basic human needs here. The same can be said about the unemployment rate, which in America is, yes, just about half that in Europe. But the reality is that the lower US unemployment is based on an increasingly growing number of only part time jobs, temporary jobs without any benefits and, of course, much lower average wages compared to other industrial nations. Very few people would agree to work for $5 an hour today in the civilized world. The amazing thing for me about this country is that as many as one-sixth (!) of all workers with full-time, year- round jobs have annual incomes that leave them well below the poverty level. That means millions of hard-working people are desperately struggling just to make ends meet. People holding full-time jobs, and sometimes two or more jobs cannot make enough money to put a roof over their heads. Only in America is there the need for car camps for the homeless as here in Eugene. The U.S. government currently spends around $281 billion a year on its military while millions of citizens are forced to live on the streets. In Europe, subsidized public housing accounts for as much as 40 percent of the total housing, compared with a paltry one percent in the US. Again, the lowest rate of assistance of any industrial nation in the world.

Ironically, the United States always pretends to be the number one nation, the leader, the best country in the world. "Only America can lead the world", asserts Newt Gingrich. The New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert, echoes him calling the U.S. "the most advanced society on earth"... And so on... Not to mention that even the ordinary people here sometimes try to argue with me when I say that life in America isn't that good. They usually insist that in many so-called "third world" countries life is much, much worse, as for an example in places such as Rwanda, Bangladesh, Somalia, etc. But these are not true examples for comparison! Yes, I agree that in Somalia life is much worse, but Somalia doesn't pretend to be the leader of the world! The reality is that the USA today, in many aspects is absolutely the worst among the industrialized nations. For example, the U.S. poverty rate is twice that of any other industrial country. As far as I know, America has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any civilized country, and this has just been increasing in recent years. Poverty among children in the United States is enormous if you were to compare it with Europe. The child poverty rate here is four (!) times the average of that in Western European countries. I read somewhere not long ago that one in five children in this country lives in extreme poverty, and many go to bed hungry! In fact, many do not have even a bed or a home. The same is true about infant mortality. It's unique in the industrial world. The United States is the only developed world nation that doesn't provide paid and job-protected maternity leave. Moreover, America is the only nation in the industrialized world with no national health care system equally accessible to all citizens. The existing inhumane health care system here in the United States is a total and complete disaster. Millions of children and adults are dying and suffering from bad care, inadequate care or no care at all. The private insurance companies are greedy and unfair. Millions of Americans risk losing everything from huge medical bills if they have a serious illness.

There is no doubt that the United States is the worst among Western industrial nations in lifting people out of poverty. One of the root-problems of poverty here, in my opinion, is lack of quality education. Twenty-seven (!) million American adults are functionally illiterate, according to a recent national study. An additional forty million can just barely read or write. I was amazed that there are almost 68,000 people here, in Lane County, with little, if any literacy skills. In Eugene alone, there are 40,000! An even worse situation is with higher education. Because a college education is becoming less and less accessible for kids from low and middle-income families, the number of poor in this country will continue to grow enormously. In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, education disparities drive income disparities. Most so-called financial "aid" is in loans, not in grants or scholarships. Student loans have gone from being the exception to the norm: more than half of American students graduate from college in deep debt. Of course, it is a very reliable and profitable business for the banks. A direct way to throw young people into the servitude of a credit trap...

These and many other facts I can compare to European (especially Scandinavian) societies, where no one goes hungry, no one lives in abject poverty, where few have too much and even fewer have too little. Yes, I agree that America is different - bigger and more diverse than any of the European countries - but this is not an excuse for keeping and maintaining an evil system of oppression and fundamental injustice...

Such is the reality of this extreme capitalist system, as I see it. I am of the opinion that American capitalism is incompatible with humaneness. Moreover, this inhumane system has led to the moral bankruptcy of American society, which has bred the alienation of people, breakdown of families, enormous crime and the drug epidemics. Although crime exists everywhere, it is predominately more present in the US than in any other country. Especially violent crime. The homicide rate here is ten times as great as that in any other nation. The United States leads the nineteen major industrial nations in the murder of children. Americans, in general, are much less free from fear of violence than citizens of any other civilized nation. Can a country be called "the best" if its citizens cannot safely walk the streets of its cities at night?! It seems to me that violent crime is rapidly becoming a part of the American way of life. The criminal justice system in this country is more of a joke. The recent comedy with the O.J.Simpson trial is the best proof of that.

The majority of Americans, I believe, are very unhappy, very disappointed and feel very hopeless about their country. Which explains why so many people are so apathetic and no longer vote at elections. They are simply turned off by the lack of choices. Elections in this country are also entirely dominated by big money. The majority of politicians are corrupted and serve as whores for corporations. The same is true with Judges. The so-called "salvage logging" of Oregon's remaining ancient forests, and U.S. District Judge Hogan in Eugene, OR, is the best example of that. So, this system can't be called a democracy either. Last year self-serving mean-spirited Republicans, who are, in my opinion, even worse than Soviet Communists used to be, took over the US Congress with support from only 18 percent of the American people. Now, with their so-called "Contract on America" they have declared jihad war against the poor people of this country. Republicans want to cut all social support programs for the needy to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. As far as I can see, it would cause an enormous amount of suffering, especially for the children. I think this can be called a special kind of social cannibalism. The Republican party of the United States, in my opinion, is the single worst terrorist organization in today's world.

After six years of living here, in this so-called "land of opportunity", I don't see any light at the end of the dark tunnel.

Well, you ask, if this country seems to be so bad, why then are you living here, and why did you decided to become a citizen? The answer is simple. I am a fighter by nature and once I dedicate my life to fight for justice against oppression, it doesn't matter where I happen to live. If there is some kind of oppression, if I see an injustice, I have to stand up and fight evil. I've lived here long enough to understand that this extreme form of capitalism is absolutely the same kind of evil as extreme communism used to be. I've come by this opinion after observing from inside this society. I think, I've spent more than enough time comparing and analyzing both of them: that system and this system. Most Americans do not have such a possibility. So, my observations lead me to the conclusion that private capital tyranny here in many aspects is, perhaps, even worse than totalitarian state tyranny.

I realize that chances for any real change in this society are very slim because of its size and the money interests involved. But, why not give it a try anyway. Too many people in this country prefer to stick their heads in the sand and exchange citizenship for consumership. The majority of Americans are as tame as puppies by this system and still tend to view any dissent as craziness and subversion, frequently echoing that well-worn cliche, "If you don't like it here, leave". Yes, of course, I could leave if I want. Lithuania is now a free country. But I simply don't want to give up and capitulate to that "we are best and if you don't agree, get out" attitude. So, in order not to be an observing foreigner, I had to become a citizen of this country. Now, I can say that this is sort of my country, too. I'll be a participant for a while, and I have all the rights to be involved. At least I can try to do something, to work toward positive changes, as I did back in Lithuania. It is not easy to change country of residence every five or so years and I really don't want just to stay here and see things go from bad to worse...

This article was first published in The Student Insurgent, January 22, 1996
It was also published in Danish newspaper Information, July 12, 1997

If you would like to read it in Danish, click on the flag