Letter to a Georgian friend

Dear Georgian Friend,

Part of my issue with trying to back Georgia's right to self-
determination as a non-Georgian is that the political langauge
Georgians often use is generally lacking in any claims of personal
responsibility. In fact, it reminds me uncannily of Iranians I know
saying, well, our country is messed up because of what you Americans
did to us. In fact, a lof of Iranians will go back half a century in
time, and cite Teddy Roosevelt's grandson's actions in helping to
overthrow Mossadeq as the number one reason they have to deal with
fundamentalists like Khamanei and Ahmadinejad running their country
today. It's absolutely laughable that they attach more cause to a
single American who's dead than to 70 million Iranians who are alive
and either actively or passively support a certain system of
governance.

While I'm not going to try to absolve the US or Russia of some
responsibility for the messed up state of the nation-state in the
world, I keep coming back to the philosophical roots of the modern
Republican and Libertarian parties in the US that are grounded in
the principle of personal responsibility belonging to no one but the
individual. In fact, the one area where Georgia's government seems
remarkably democratic is that like its citizens, the government
doesn't want to accept any blame for the state of affairs in the
country, and instead, attempts to shift the blame to these shadowy
external actors, ie Russia or the US, much like Iranians try to do.

Greg knows that I'm not the most pro-Putin person out there (in
fact, I'm pretty anti-Putin), but I would literally get in fights
with people on the bus in Tbilisi who would go on ad nauseum how
awful Russia was or how great the US was without ever mentioning
once what they were trying to do to make Georgia a better place to
live. When I encountered lost Russians wandering up Chachavadze in
search of the Russian Embassy yet could find no one willing to speak
Russian with them, these individuals would often turn to me for help
while I was waiting for the bus to go to Vake Pool, and I would
offer to personally show them the Embassy. It's not that I had any
moral obligation to do this as a non-Georgian, an expat. However, I
was very offended how individual Georgians would treat certain
minorities in their country, and seeing this, evoked my American
sense of equality and justice having seen a number of injustices
committed in the US growing up in the inner-city.

What I'm saying here is that not until Georgians on the street are
willing to take personal responsibility for the fact that
Abkhazians, Armenians, Azeris, Russians, etc don't feel welcomed in
their country, there's no chance of a political compromise with any
of the breakaway regions or with Russia. Personally, I think a
federalist system within Georgia would do just fine by both sides,
with limited autonomy granted to entities like Abkhazia and South
Ossetia. However, on an individual level, people in these breakaway
communities ultimately feel safer as minorities under the Russian
system of governance, which is really kind of sad statement of fact
given the damage Putin has inflicted on other minority groups in the
north Caucasus.

I'm not advocating some sort of diversity training for Georgians,
but I really think Georgians have not the vaguest idea of how so
many diverse people in the US manage to get along day in and day
out. It starts with a willingness to accept personal responsibility
for one's actions and to realize that, while governments may be run
by incompetents who are shortsighted and/or corrupt, people in these
countries don't necessarily have to follow the example of their
idiotic leaders. Case in point -- the United States.

Yours truly,
Brian