For the tens of millions of Americans who dismiss any political thought that doesn’t spew from a television set or an iPod, the idea that the ruling classes of this country want to turn this nation into a police state seems, well, bat-shit crazy.

But for those of us Americans who’ve lived abroad under despots, man’s inbred desire to dominate and grind down his neighbors is all too real. Living and studying in Moscow (as I did when I was a younger man), I witnessed, daily, both the icy hubris of a militia given free rein by the Politburo to run Soviet cities with iron fists (and boots and clubs and … ) and the pervasive despair (the resigned subjugation, really) that hung on Russians as heavily as did their winter fur coats. If such despotic horrors can evolve in Russia — with its better educated population and democratic traditions stretching back to at least the 13th century — it can happen in the historical anomaly that is the United States. Considering our still-tribal nature, domination is the norm on the Earth, not the exception.

So it was with deep sadness that I bid farewell, in my own, quiet way to famed Russian writer and thinker Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, a former prophet of freedom who died Aug. 3 at the age of 89 of heart failure.

What’s remarkable about Solzhenitsyn is that — despite his not publishing anything of note until he had drifted into middle age as an obscure high school teacher — once he poured out the raging disappointment he felt about what was happening both to him and to his country, his acidic, insightful writing terrified the Soviet ruling classes who had (it turns out) only temporarily achieved their dream of continuous martial law. Solzhenitsyn’s bile gave birth to his inaugural 1962 tome, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book, about a prison camp inmate, was based on Solzhenitsyn’s own years of internal exile for making unflattering comments about Josef Stalin. Since its introduction, the book has shone as both a stinging indictment of political repression and a call to the cerebral, inner resistance to authority that, Solzhenitsyn felt, would sustain Mother Russia until its sons and daughters could one day liberate themselves and their land.

Through the next 50 or so years, Solzhenitsyn kept hammering away at oppression and hypocrisy among all peoples, but he almost always reserved his writing for Soviet leaders. The Gulag Archipelago, published in 1973 — a full three years after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature — is his most famous work and led to his expulsion from the Soviet Union until 1991, when he returned as more of a living monument than a mere hero. Yet that homecoming was tainted by his later support of Vladimir Putin as a man who could restore Mother Russia to its former historical prominence. Younger Russian iconoclasts, who had honed their own poison pens as a result of the sacrifices made by Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov and the towering Vladimir Visotkski, could only shake their heads in sadness at Solzhenitsyn’s apparent insanity in supporting the former KGB officer (cum president) with a dangerous god complex.

Many in the West, with the notable exceptions of Henry Kissinger and the current mastermind behind U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential run, Zbigniew Brzezinski (who rose to prominence as national security adviser to former president Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981) hailed Solzhenitsyn as the heir apparent to the prophetic Russian literary traditions of a Tolstoy or Chekhov. More so after his 1974 deportation and 18-year residency in Vermont. To those of us who loved him and his writing, “Sasha” was a ridiculously gifted writer who didn’t begin to write until he had nothing left to lose.

As Solzhenitsyn and those close to him used to point out, the reason despotism will never last on the Earth lies in a simple, eternal truth that all tyrants forget: oppressed people truly become free when everything they had, and everything they were, is taken from them. Our current American overlords seem to have already forgotten this universal maxim, if they ever knew it to begin with. This truth gives those of us who write against our own domestic repression the same hope that sustained Sasha during those cold, lonely years in a Soviet prison camp. All men are born to live free. And neither deity nor despot can ever prevail against a truth so powerful.

Woo-hoo! Now’s the time to take care of all these parking tickets you’ve racked up visiting downtown’s arts and/or entertainment districts. Pay your original fine(s) at 417 North 7th Street through Aug. 7 and the city of Las Vegas will waive the late fees. This is an effort to recoup a portion of the nearly $10 million in outstanding parking citations on the books.

The Beatles Revolution Lounge has moved “Live Revolution” to Sundays, beginning Aug. 10 with a lineup featuring Afghan Raiders, Wallpaper, plus special guest DJs Aurajin and M!ke Attack. Residents The Bargain DJ Collective remain and doors still open at 10 p.m. The nightclub will now be closed Tuesdays except for special events. …

The Killers will be among six Silver State dignitaries inducted into the Nevada Entertainer/Artist Hall of Fame 6 :30 p.m. Sept. 18 at UNLV’s Artemus Ham Concert Hall. …

Lon Bronson and his All-Star Band will perform during the first three minutes of NBC’s Last Comic Standing at 8 p.m. Aug. 7. …

Worldfolk’s Roddy Belford is bringing Las Vegas GirlFestival back for another year. The festival for all female performers will run Oct. 24-26. For more information call 353-8178 or e-mail rod_belford@yahoo.com. …

“Plan B Afterhours” has moved from Eden to Scores; festivities start at 2 a.m. Thu.-Sun. …

Monte Carlo/Light Group eatery Brand is the next steakhouse to host a nightlife-oriented happy hour; “Afterwork” takes place 6-10 p.m. every Wednesday. …

Visiting DJs this week include: Australia’s Dirty South Aug. 10 at MGM Grand’s “Wet Republic”; Miami Beach’s Ross One Aug. 10 at Christian Audigier the Nightclub; and L.A. trance/techno vet Christopher Lawrence Aug. 13 at Body English’s “Godskitchen.

Is U.S. Sen. Barack Obama full of hubris?

Some people think so, including our corporate overlord, Stephens Media LLC President Sherm Frederick. He said as much in his Sunday column in the Review-Journal.

Frederick cites Obama’s excellent adventure overseas, and a visit to Washington, D.C., quoting a Washington Post item about the event:

“The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls — just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door — just as they do for the actual president.

“Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, ‘This is the moment … that the world is waiting for,’ adding: ‘I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.’ ”

Sounds fairly arrogant, right? But let’s take a closer look.

First, there’s little doubt that Obama’s going to generate applause overseas. He’s the first American with a chance of sitting in the Oval Office that most Europeans have seen in eight years who’s not a warmonger. If the Germans and the French opposed the war, and Obama is all about ending the war, what would surprise anybody about the fact that they like Obama but dislike, say, President George W. Bush?

Second, Obama is under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service. They do things like ask police to clear hallways, move protectees around in motorcades and bring people in side doors. It’s called doing their job.

Obama’s rival U.S. Sen. John McCain is also under Secret Service protection. We don’t hear much about McCain being arrogant, even after a legitimate news reporter was kicked out of a holding area.

Third, the quote in question was taken completely out of context by the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, whom Frederick is quoting in his own column. Obama’s actual quote was this:

“It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol.”

“It’s not about me at all.” Well, that certainly sounds like hubris, doesn’t it?

No, actually the hubris belongs to Milbank, who instead of apologizing for his error (which appears to have been based on another Washington Post writer’s reporting) called critics whiners. And when some of those critics turned out to be the staff at Countdown with Keith Olbermann — where Milbank had appeared for four years but which banned him from appearing on-air until he issued an explanation — Milbank simply decided to jump ship and join CNN instead.

For that record, that’s what hubris looks like.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But there is, we suspect, something wrong with kicking out legitimate news reporters who are simply waiting to interview U.S. Sen. John McCain. Or has the Arizona senator morphed once again to become more like George W. Bush?

We understand the legitimate purpose of security for the candidates, both of whom enjoy protection from the U.S. Secret Service. But the reporter in question, who just happens to be black, had not only press identification issued by his newspaper, but also press credentials to cover the McCain event that day!

So he was standing in the wrong place? Yeah. OK.

Access to the senator is tightly controlled,” [McCain advance man Jonathan] Block said. “I would first express regret that your reporter was moved, and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that race had nothing to do with it.”

As CityLife reported back in March, Nevada’s (mostly) white, middle-class evangelicals are wondering (mostly in earnest) whether God cares about global warming. And whether they should, too.

Yet, if a new study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies — one of the nation’s premier research and policy institutions, and the only one focusing exclusively on issues important to blacks and other minorities — is right, those pasty soccer moms and dads and rug rats won’t be the most affected by climate change. As with any great tumult, those closest to the bottom of society (i.e., blacks and other minorities) will face the greatest hell once the Earth’s atmosphere red lines.

Lest you dismiss this as some liberal rant, consider: The study finds that blacks and other minorities are twice as likely to live in cities, where a so-called heat-island effect compounds severe temperatures. They’re also less able to afford spiking energy costs, which hampers both their ability to turn up the air conditioning or move to cooler climes. As dwindling energy supplies and rising temperatures continue to push prices higher, those with the least suffer the most.

According to recent news reports, surveys have shown 81 percent of black Americans think the government should act strongly to mitigate the effects of climate change. Although some among white evangelicals (read: the Southern Baptists) have begun to take these global threat seriously, they’re not speaking out to the degree that their brothers and sisters of color are. For example, one of South Carolina’s largest coalitions recently spoke out on global warming, seeing as how minorities will be most affected when things heat up beyond repair.

Still, Nevada’s white evangelicals continue to either: 1. Deny the science that explains climate change; 2. Wonder how they can give parishioners real tools to curb global warming; or 3. See all this talk as a sign of the end times (a historical mistake of gargantuan proportions on the part of Christians, since the original Greek and Hebrew “holy” texts refer to the end of an astrological age, the age of Pisces, instead of actual Armageddon).

Folks, this reluctance to act — preferring endless jawboning to real action — hampers Nevada in so many ways. From a wariness of constructing a rational tax base to continued endurance of inefficiency and malfeasance across all local and state governmental agencies. There have been times in American history (the American Revolution, pre-Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement) when many Christians embodied both the better angels of our nature and national drill sergeants, who kicked our asses into action. Can Christianity again rise to this challenge, or are the atheists correct when they say it’s just one more cult that should be tossed into the dustbin of history?