It’s an old Stanley Kubrick movie, which best describes the general lack of response to the historic radical realignments happening in our plain sight. Often the reasoning behind most historic events is fairly straight forward but historians add shiny chaff and makes it complicated. Like the simple revenge story being played out now.

It happened Dec. 5, 1989, on a chilly night in Dresden, East Germany. A large threatening group of demonstrators, filled with euphoria at the fall of the Berlin wall approached a large yellow house which was the local KGB headquarters. The guard bolted into the building and in a few minutes a short figure emerged and warned them not to enter the office because his comrades were armed and were allowed to shoot in an emergency. Although the crowd disappeared, knowing his colleagues were still not out of danger he sought help from the Red Army tank who responded that they could not send tanks without clearance from Moscow and Moscow was silent.

That’s when Vladimir realized the true colors of the communist party he had worshipped as a youngster. That night he switched allegiance from the red party to his mother nation, the USSR. He also took a vow: Someday he would destroy the country that instigated the fall of his beloved empire and almost killed him.

Across the Atlantic we thumped our chests in victory for destroying that, in our view, Evil Empire to win the Cold War. From a moral viewpoint yes, we were doing a good deed bringing freedom to the oppressed folks of that region. From the Soviet perspective it was deliberate, cold-blooded permanent destabilization of their country. Ergo, seeking revenge, to destroy their destroyer sounds kind of just when you think about it rationally, except that it’s our country they, to be precise he, is hell bent on annihilating.

Why our leader makes these drastic decisions to benefit the earlier mentioned Vladimir is perplexing and there are plenty of juicy explanations in circulation. But no point in going there because of two reasons — can’t be sure about its authenticity and secondly, it really does not matter now because the Kremlin iceberg has already struck us, and water is fast gushing into our holds.

The sinking feeling is real when:

Our otherwise genial neighbor up north is contemplating cutting electricity to our northeastern states, even considering closing their crude oil valve to our refineries. They have already removed U.S. alcoholic beverages from all their shops.

Our newly christened allies in the world are now Russia and North Korea and China is still in double minds because this bunch looks too fascist for their communist palette.

Brazil, India, Russia, Malaysia and few others are already conducting international oil trade using their mutual currencies, avoiding petro-dollars. Europe, now fervently on the path of severing ties with the USA, could gang up with the above nations plus Japan, China and few more key Arab countries to replace our mighty U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency. Of course this will take time, but not too much, especially if we become more belligerent globally, accelerating their union.

It’s been 80 years since the mighty pound sterling stepped down from its lofty pedestal of international trading currency at the Bretton Woods Agreement and handed the baton to our dear dollar.

With the current blindsiding winds of change, if in the next few years a new trading currency were to emerge, the current U.S. dollar that fetches Canadian $1.44 would most likely fetch less than half of that. Also, our inflation, unemployment and crime rate would creep closer to that of Brazil, South Africa and the like.

But more important, Vladimir’s two daughters would be able to etch the following words of legacy on their Papa’s tombstone to avenge Dresden: Vladimir Putin, the man who single-handedly destroyed the United States of America.

— Jayant Kamicheril, Reading, Pennsylvania