Etcetera

The Battle of Capitol Hill echoes harshly for Freep writer born in Soviet Bloc

January 10, 2021, 12:05 PM

"I couldn’t shake the sinking feeling of deja vu Wednesday" during TV coverage of the U.S. Capitol takeover, writes Detroit journalist Mark Kurlyandchik, who left Soviet-run Lithuania as a boy three decades ago.


Mark Kurlyandchik: "My father watched in bewilderment." (Photo: Facebook)

"The emotions it inspired in my parents' immigrant household were instant and layered," Kurlyandchik says in the Free Press, where he has been restaurant reviewer and dining reporter since 2016.

Seeing the dark irony, I tried to crack a joke.

"Good thing you dragged us to the other side of the world for this," I told my father, who watched in bewilderment as the very thing he thought he'd left behind flashed across the screen. ...

This was precisely the type of political instability we'd fled to avoid 31 years ago, as the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics grew imminent. ... Lithuania declared its independence in March 1990, just as we were settling into the culture shock that came with a two-bedroom flat in Hamtramck. ...

On Jan. 6, 2021, the shining beacon of light that is supposed to be America didn't just dim, it began broadcasting an SOS.

Full essay on how "echoes folded in on themselves" 


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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