The left always has plans: “But take it we will”
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”.]
“When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of Communism; we will not take it under the label of Socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been smeared too much. We will take the United States under the labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But, take it we will.”—Alexander Trachtenberg, member of the CPUSA’s Central Control Committee, at the Communist Parties National Convention, Madison Square Garden, 1944
When something is undertaken in stealth by dedicated and determined believers in the cause (and/or by cynical and amoral power-mad unbelievers), it is difficult for the majority of people to detect and therefore hard to combat. In the case of communism/socialism, you also have a doctrine that is pernicious in its effects but naturally appeals to idealistic and gullible people – until they finally experience it, and then it’s generally too late.
Relabeling something may sound trivial and merely rhetorical, but it is not – as Orwell well knew. (And yes, Orwell remained a socialist. I wrote about that here.)
I wrote at length about socialism/Communism’s enduring appeal in this post:
…[T]his persistence of the idea of socialism/Communism despite evidence of its awfulness when put into practice in the real world should not be at all surprising. And I don’t think we’ll ever find the proper stake to drive into its still-beating heart, because the nature of this beast is that it represents an idea with strong appeal to a vast number of human beings. No amount of empirical or historical evidence can permanently teach enough people otherwise.
The rhetoric of Socialism/Communism has intrinsic appeal to certain groups of people and some members of each group are always likely to fall under its spell: the guilt-ridden wealthy and/or their even-more-guilt-ridden spawn, the poor who feel they’ve been screwed by society, the politically and economically naive intelligentsia who feel they know better than others, the religious and/or idealistic who want everyone to be loving and good and selfless, and those who just like the idea of power and control over others and plan to be the ones in charge.
Combine all that natural appeal with the undeniable propagandist skill of the left—including their willingness to lie in the most brazen manner — and you have an even greater effect. And then combine all of that with ignorance of history and economics, our culture’s reluctance to teach the young our good points and its eagerness to harp on our bad ones, and the fact that people only tend to really learn something through bitter and personal experience.
The wonder is that more people don’t believe that socialism/Commmunism is the answer to the world’s prayers, not that so many succumb to it in the first place. Never imagine that the fight, especially in the intellectual and educational and propaganda spheres, can be over. It would be too bad if each generation had to learn the lesson through personal suffering rather than in the realm of ideas.
During the Biden administration, the American people have been getting a small yet up-close-and-personal taste of it. Polls have reflected that and approval of Biden et al has dropped precipitously.
Fortunately for the US, the voting bill numbered HR1, which would have changed the voting laws of every state – whether the state wants it or not, and that includes all red states – in a way that would destroy many of the safeguards against voting fraud that still remain in some states, and would have enabled the ability of the Democrats to be elected no matter what the people actually think or want, failed to pass the Senate. That bill only failed by a hair, though, and that hair is named Manchin/Sinema and their opposition to ending the filibuster (although I’m not sure how they would have voted on the bill itself and they might have voted against it, too, but it never even came to that).
However, the House had already voted for the bill along strict party lines, and therefore every single Democrat member of the House who holds him or herself out to be a moderate is obviously lying. That fact should be used by all Republicans who run against them, especially in swing districts. I hope it will be used in that way, but I’m not sure enough people have long enough memories to recall what the issues were, nor am I sure that most people knew what the bill was about and what the Democrats were trying to do in the first place.
That’s one of the problems, isn’t it? The public has to be very alert in order to understand just what is happening with each bill and what is likely to occur as a result of its passage, because the left tries to obscure those things. A failure as with HR1 is considered by the left to be only temporary, and therefore it pushes on and on with its plans.
But perhaps they’ve pushed too far, too fast, this time. Perhaps they’ve woken up the average American in a way that will backfire on them. But understand that such a victory for those who are against the left is never permanent, and constant vigilance is necessary.
Amongst the multitudinous problems with leftist plans for social engineering and “fundamental transformation” (from the French revolutionaries through the Bolsheviks through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot’s insane remaking of Cambodia in the Year Zero up to today’s “woke” lunatics) is that not only are these nefarious schemes doomed to failure (as anyone well-read in history or well-informed about human nature could attest), but that the leaders are, with very few exceptions, psychopathic and delusional. Kerry Bolton has written an interesting study of some of these charlatans and madmen entitled The Psychotic Left, which provides a good addendum to Paul Johnson’s earlier study of (pernicious and powerful) Intellectuals, nor should one neglect Hoffer’s The True Believer.
What is frustrating–ranging to infuriating–is the number of people who seem to have no clue. Or who look as if they might but pretend it’s not what they want others to know of them.
“What’s wrong with….?” some government proposal’s name (of the mom, apple pie and compassion thesaurus) which is obviously going to do the opposite makes one despair.
I believe that the appeal of communism/socialism is due to the way humans lived for 1000s of years. Small tribal groups, mostly related by blood, where the necessities are generally shared, the group thrives or all die. Families continue this form to this day. It works for people who have emotional bonds to each other but is not workable expanded beyond that.
Power addicted sociopaths get attracted to these, and similar systems of emotionally appealing top down control and take charge of them unless actively, continually, weeded out. Our Left/Dems like their weeds too much.
An idea that will not die despite the huge amount of negative evidence against it is an idea that will eventually succeed.
This idea is being imposed from within, not after conquest by an external foe.
We can call communists/socialists all sorts of dirty, foul yet true epithets. But in the end it comes down to Mao’s power, always from the end of a gun. We shall have to kill them, or they will kill us. Not a pleasant choice but also not a difficult one.
“During the Biden administration, the American people have been getting a small yet up-close-and-personal taste of it. Polls have reflected that and approval of Biden et al has dropped precipitously.”
So what? He is there and we are here and he (or his masters) will keep on keeping on.
The republicans will take congress in 2022? All they will do is keep the seats warm until the people return the democrats to office in 2024.
Cicero:
Civil war doesn’t have a great track record in that regard, to say the least. And the human cost is immense, as well.
Many nations have staved off Communism without it. And many nations have gotten Communism in spite of it.
Watched a you tube video about Confucius and his influence in China. I thought it gives an insight into why socialism ect is so strong there. IE the individual is nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b6onwrGOig&t=75s
The crimes against humanity the Nazis did are well known, those the Marxists have done less so, with help of a complying press even the Western press. Haven’t passed this on here yet but here it is
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Many take a try at death toll the Marxists have done to humanity but mostly always under estimate it.
Watched a Youtube video about Confucius and his influence in China. ie the individual is nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b6onwrGOig&t=75s
Neo states, “When something is undertaken in stealth by dedicated and determined believers in the cause (and/or by cynical and amoral power-mad unbelievers), it is difficult for the majority of people to detect and therefore hard to combat.”
While true, there is a fundamental obstacle that appears when stealth, deceit and treachery are employed. To finalize their conquest, they have to come out of the shadows and reveal just what they’re really all about.
In a well armed society, the revelation as to true intent presents a fundamental obstacle. Thus the left’s obsession with the private ownership of guns and their efforts at their elimination. If trends continue, the police and military will be presented with a final choice; do they stand with liberty or tyranny?
neo then goes on to say, “In the case of communism/socialism, you also have a doctrine that is pernicious in its effects but naturally appeals to idealistic and gullible people”
Proposal: Constitutional amendment; the promotion of ANY collectivist ideology carries the mandatory consequence of permanent loss of citizenship and deportation. That is because collectivist ideologies are fundamentally antithetical to America’s founding principles and a mortal threat to them.
People can believe whatever they wish, can express their opinions as they wish. But any societal promotion of a collectivist ideology results in the aforementioned consequence.
Otherwise, the alternative will be forced upon us, “We shall have to kill them, or they will kill us”…
Only the willfully blind imagine otherwise.
The Socialist always claimed they could create heaven on earth. The only reason they didn’t succeed is that the wrong people were in charge. Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot were obviously the wrong person. If they keep trying, they’ll find the right person.
El Tigre:
The Individual is not nothing in a Confucian Society. The Individual has a very well-defined set of hierarchically organised obligations within his family and wider society. Also there’s more after the digression coming right up.
This extreme worship of the Individual is a particularly American disease. The Greeks of the Polis/Agora so fetished by the CivNats had a term for Citizen Individualists who did not fulfill their collective responsibilities: Idiots.
Back to the Chinese. They (having managed to survive through thick and thin as a continuously evolving culture and civilization for let’s call it 3,000 years) are not some kind of robotic hive-mind bugmen. Their literature is full of individualists. Go read Romance of the Three Kingdoms or the Water Margin. The most famous and loved of their poets, Li Bai was nothing if not an individualist. Their histories are dotted with scholars who stood on principle against Emperors and the rest of the civil service regardless of personal risk. Also there’s this thing called Taoism.. where there is only flow. And get this: you can be a Confucian and a Taoist at the same time. In fact you probably should be.
What the Chinese get, which Whitey don’t is that everything exists in tension. Always. Too much of a Good Thing becomes a Bad Thing. Do I need to bore you with the standard lecture on Ying / Yang. I hope not. Anyway would just sound trite reading about it.
So there you are in the USA/West faced with a Woke Leviathan determined to crush you and the answer is for you to allude to Chinese Bugmen? Funny… were I you… I’d be thinking seriously that one could do better than that. One thing I can tell you right now, is that in the real world, a rag tag army of individuals isn’t going to take down this Thing which threatens you. A four year old gets it: You need something like a giant robot to take down Godzilla. A ten year old has already been brainwashed by Leviathan in the schools to think that he’s an individual… Nope… now he’s just a Eunuch. Chinese had them too, once 😛
@Other Commenters:
Socialism can also work within clan / tribe / ethnic group / possibly other forms of highly-aligned groupings.
But as brainwashed children of Leviathan who think you’re still Individuals, you’re not allowed to think of any groups which might serve your own interest. Only groups which can hurt you are permitted. And you go along with it.
e.g. Swedish Socialism worked well enough (not great) while Swedes were Swedes. Once they started importing savages and moochers, it stopped working.
Thank you, Geoffrey B, for supporting my thought on civil war. Neo’s reply was that since a desired outcome of armed strife is not inevitable, in effect we should continue to live on our knees in fear of our government agencies such as IRS and FBI.
Anyone well versed in American history can see what a great deal the Socialists have accomplished in the past 100 years. There is no denying that, which they term “successes”.
I’m no kind of sinologist. Just a peasant. But I do get tired of folks opining on the Chinese using cartoonish archetypes. It contributes as many bits of information to the debate as a Kalahari Bushman expounding on Shakespeare or the Wars of the Roses.
The deeper issue is that we use other civilizations as mirrors to our own. It’s more than clear that Westerners are as likely as any other peoples to have trouble really understanding themselves. Just because you swim in a goldfish bowl it doesn’t make you an expert on bowls and water. And then to hold up a false mirror… that just compounds the error.
The Chinese are a profoundly useful mirror for sure. But to use it you have to know them. And then you have to deal with the fact that all experts on China have ideological agendas. Peasants like me, too 😛 So the mirror will always be warped. But still… West today is such a #@$^show that even a Fun House Mirror might be of some use.
“because the left tries to obscure those things.”
In previous years the left worked hard at that obscuration, but in previous years the left had never owned the overwhelming majority of the ‘news’ media that it does now, and despite the vigorous life of certain current subsets of ‘newsgivers’, the left finds it easier than ever to bamboozle the public by its outrageous assertions and even more outrageous omissions.
To make things worse, the onslaught in the academy, the media, the deep state and even the corporatocracy of cancel culture – the Things which Must Not Be Said – have muzzled growing fractions of the rational opposition to the left. And those uninformed fractions never uttered a peep against the Zuckerberg corruption of half a billion dollars worth of the election boards of crucial states last November.
It’s an uphill battle.
Something rather good here on Left / Right and Haidt’s Five Moral Foundations:
https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2021/11/27/leftists-are-motivated-by-self-interest-and-envy-not-compassion-the-evidence-a-rough-transcript-of-a-video-by-edward-dutton/
This is ten minutes well spent. The first five minutes or so is about lockdownism but the second half pertains to the topic from this post. It is really good and Ezra Levant is correct Neal Oliver is an incredibly thoughtful commentator. His comments on his Saturday night show never fail to be great.
https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1464711189372588039
Covid is right up there with the greatest things that have ever happened for the Marxists.
Zaphod,
“This extreme worship of the Individual is a particularly American disease. The Greeks of the Polis/Agora so fetished by the CivNats had a term for Citizen Individualists who did not fulfill their collective responsibilities: Idiots.”
That you regard America’s focus upon individual liberty as “extreme worship of the Individual” reveals just how little you understand. Which is particularly choice given your berating of those who opine upon the Chinese and reveal how shallow is their understanding.
Here’s a clue; “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
Civilization is not possible without cooperation as its basis. Cooperation is the necessary foundation for competition to flourish.
America’s cultural foundation is the singular society that has recognized that individual breakthroughs are the spark upon which civilizational advancement is most optimized. Then celebrated both the individual and the societal benefits that rewarding individual initiative brings.
Americans rightly admire the individual who risks and succeeds. Rightly because without the inequality of talent, ambition and persistence civilizations endure rather than prosper. The individual who goes their own way benefits society when they share their hard won awareness. It’s “the road less traveled” upon which breakthroughs in understanding occur.
As for China, one doesn’t have to identify individual exceptions, to see the forest for the trees.
Overall, China’s history is a perfect example of civilizational stasis. Once China possessed the most advanced civilization on earth, how is it that the Europeans surpassed them? Between say the late 15th century and the 20th exactly what progress did China achieve?
That civilizational ennui is certainly not due to a lack of intelligence. Why did Chinese society not match Japan’s progress?
How well does today’s China welcome individual achievement? The Communists take their best and then tell them where they shall be employed to benefit greater China.
In essence, how is that different from the Borg?
In rejecting individual self-determination, they place a straight jacket upon the individual’s soul. When the State dictates your life, self-determination is an illusion.
What Geoffrey Brittain said . . .
Perhaps they should not be allowed to name bills. Affordable Care Act. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act. Build Back Better, all of these names have very little to do with the actual content of the bill and are often the exact opposite of said content.
@Griffin:
Explain then how the West has gone wrong?
Explain to me how to stop the cancer of universalist liberalism (= collectivism in disguise) infecting the Body Politic?
How do you do that? How do you rewind the tape and edit it so that it didn’t happen and cannot happen?
Who do you blame it on? Who do you kill? People need killing, you know.. Just like bodies need surgery and chemotherapy.
Stasis? Do you think Chinese thought hasn’t evolved in the past two centuries? Or Japanese thought? The Japs evolved in 50 years enough to cross Rozhdestvensky’s T at Tsushima. Only mistake they made was to move on you guys three generations too early. Enter the Dragon.
Stasis is landing on the Moon in 1969 and then declaring victory and forgetting how to do it after 1972. Stasis is being unable to even *name* and survive as a free individual let alone politician some of the pressing social problem root causes in the West.
Flying Pigeon Bicycle to Huawei and Space Stations in 40 years is not stasis.
Chinky Intellectual Elite has read Tocqueville. And Schmitt. And all your guys. And you have read?
What do you really know about Chinky? They’ve seen off the Xiongnu, the Mongols, the Manchus, Various oh-so-moral Western countries dumping Opium on them, The Japanese, alien ideologies like Marxism (they’re as Marxist today as you’re a Republic), waded through rivers of blood and other- and self-inflicted pain, and still they abide as Chinese in China.
The Borg? Have you in your entire life read a single piece of literature by a Chinese that isn’t Cultural Revolution Effed My Family Porn? And you say I know. Nothing about America and Americans. With all due respect…
They’re no saints and no panacea… but there are things to learn from them and those things are not all negative lessons.
Mind you, they’re looking at us and gleaning the good bits and rejecting the dross. A topic which obsesses Chinese intellectuals is how their elites got the 2nd half of C19 so wrong while the Japanese (Fukuzawa Yukichi & Co) got it so right in terms of adopting the best of the West. They’re determined not to make the same mistake this time. Maybe they will.. maybe they won’t. But what I know for sure is that the West is too self-absorbed and too arrogant to consider learning from the Chinese. That’s a tragedy.
Zaphod:
You know little about the US but pretend to know a lot. I know little about China and don’t pretend to know more.
What I do know, though, indicates that the US and China have (or used to have) antithetical values regarding a lot of important issues such as the individual versus the group, and liberty. These are deeply held beliefs and it means that the societies that exist in each place are very different and are not trying to be the same. The competition is ongoing. At present, the US has taken a turn for the worse, and if that trend continues we are in deep deep trouble. I don’t think anyone here denies that. But the solution for the US will have to come by a different route than becoming China, or the US will have become something unrecognizable as the US.
Martin:
The names are purposely Orwellian.
Geoffrey Britain on November 27, 2021 at 9:08 pm
You are an excellent expounder of the American creedal idea.
But wasn’t it geoffb who mentioned synchrony, or synchronicity, the other day? Looks like it happened again today. Your comment:
“Civilization is not possible without cooperation as its basis. Cooperation is the necessary foundation for competition to flourish.”
mirrors my own recent recognition that there is a certain tension between cooperation and competition. We pursue within-group competition to gain promotions, more money or responsibility, attention, even to show just what good cooperators we are. But when we face external or out-group threats, we must also cooperate to resist their attempts to compete with us. Reference warfare or even trade and commerce between hunter gatherer societies or nation states.
Even Olympic or other athletes compete with each other to join a team, wherein they then cooperate to compete against other teams.
YouTube knows my every thought.
Nuclear Engineer Homer Simpson Kidnapped by China:
https://youtu.be/kxRnh4CFhaw
Random quote from some mouth-breather on Gab today:
“if the founding fathers of china or japan returned to their countries they would be celebrated and made honorary kings
if the founding fathers of america returned they wouldn’t even be allowed on twitter and would probably be thrown in jail…”
Not quite how I’d have said it… but out of the mouths of, well, mouth-breathing gabbers and…
And yet for all their melinia of wisdom and superiority over the ‘west’ the CCP fell for and love the Marxism of those Germans and Russians. Hundreds of millions killed and Zaphod still carries their night soil. Why, he’s got his. An old old story.
No expert I, but I would suggest that to be more accurate about Sinology, one ought to focus much more on Taiwan, its culture and its ethic—and its achievements in the face of great adversity—“simply” because its Chinese culture has not been corrupted by Communism.
(Though might some claim that it has been “warped” by “anti-Communism”…?)
– – – – – – – – –
And in other “We-shall-bury-you” news, introducing (once again) Eric Feigl-Ding:
https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-impersonator-eric-feigl-ding
– – – – – – – – –
And where would we be without the latest on Hunter….
https://nypost.com/2021/11/28/chinese-titan-lavished-hunter-biden-with-3-carat-gem-offer-of-30-million/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
Stuff that all of us knew over a year ago, determinedly ignored by MSM, begins to filter out.
The laptop from hell
https://nypost.com/2021/11/28/chinese-titan-lavished-hunter-biden-with-3-carat-gem-offer-of-30-million/
The Biden family offered their services to a huge, Chinese-government-linked energy consortium to expand its business around the world. How do we know? Because of hundreds of emails documenting the deal found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. In her new book, “Laptop from Hell,” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine tells the tale:
Communism always works when it’s voluntary. The family unit epitomizes “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” A voluntary charitable transaction elevates both the giver and the given. Coercion through taxation or confiscation breeds resentment, anger and/or hopelessness on both sides.
opposition to ending the filibuster
The filibuster can be, and has been more than once, overridden for a single vote by a simple majority under Senate Rule XX. “Ending the filibuster” is media misdirection. There is no need to end a rule that can be temporarily overridden at any time. There is never a case when a simple majority cannot override any filibuster provided Rule XX be invoked.
We should not forget that the Senate Rules are whatever the Senate wants them to be. The cloture rule has every bit as much force as having to say “Simon says” or “Mother may I?” or answering in the form of a question on Jeopardy.
All Sinema and Manchin are refusing to do is be part of a simple majority vote on this particular issue. The second they decide to be part of that majority the “filibuster rule” is no protection. They can invoke Rule XX, pass by majority vote, and then go right back to pretending there’s such a thing as a filibuster on every other bill if they wish.
Kind of old hat isn’t it? so 2010s…
Heck, Bella Dodd can be much scarier if you think about what she can say vs what she couldn’t say.. [not to mention to take a time and compare what Willi Munsenbergs truth may do to the love of the seeming more bucolic pre 60’s… not to mention a surprise as to the years acorns which are now mighty unopposable oaks have become]
When the verdicts came out did you notice the exact same pre-printed signs in the hands of man protestors in state after state? signs that matched?
what your watching is a soft landing into something that the soft young will want to be delivered from… you know… kind of like the economic negative that Germany suffered under the agreements post WWII… or the similar that triggered the various many revolutions rolled into one claimed to start at Kronstadt.
“Close friends of many, years’ standing became deadly enemies overnight. Little cliques, based on the principle of mutual protection and advancement, sprang up everywhere. Some shouted slogans from Jacques Duclos. Some shouted down anyone who suggested logical discussion of problems. The mood, the emotions, were hysterically leftist with the most violent racist talk I ever heard.”
? Bella Dodd, School of Darkness
“education in and of itself is not a deterrent to the destruction of a nation. The real questions to be posed are: what kind of education? to what purpose? with what goal? under what standards?”
? Bella Dodd, School of Darkness
As a rare positive example of how the mass media can be weaponized to build a mass movement, we should revisit the life and efforts of the Weimar communist media mogul Willi Munzenberg. – Aaron Lake Smith
THEY know all these people I tried to introduce.. YOU don’t…
and still do not know what they do, or the unity they gain from you not knowing (also the superiority feeling they get that your ignorant), and how nothing you do will work (prior history informs us what the 1,024,453th pigeon will do in similar conditions – right B.F. Skinner?)
Skinner was just making the Jesuits saying about give them the children (copied over and over by tons of others – but it was the Jesuits that first sent out the missionaries for this point)…
anyway.. food for thought from history you never knew existed!!!
All news is lies and all propaganda is disguised as news. — Willi Munzenberg
Munzenberg had a special talent for bringing communist ideas out of the intellectual ghetto and making them palatable for average working people.
His efforts hinged on a single premise — that ideology functioned best when hidden.
Early on, he recognized that austere party publications would never appeal to the masses, instinctively understanding that people resisted stridency and dogma.
To change hearts and minds, a soft touch was needed. People will always prefer entertainment to dogmatism, so he did the natural thing and folded communist ideas into mainstream publications, product packaging, plays, and movies. He saw communists as a hidden vanguard operating at the helm of a coalition of liberals, social democrats, and intellectuals who were slowly being “softened up” (to use Lenin’s phrase) to eventually form or join communist parties.
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By the time the hidden is in plain sight, its too late to do something about it..
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“His specialty was the covert influence campaign. These interventions — like those the CIA employs — involved throwing shadows with articles, mass psychology, and a degree of deceit.”
“Munzenberg firmly believed that atrocity porn had political uses.”
He created the Popular Front strategy avant-la-lettre…..
One last reminder…
They know him, what he did, who learned from him, and what he did to you, me, and everyone in the world because of who he influenced and his methods… which you are all living through, we all are…
you should ask WHY do they know him, you dont
WHY did they erase Freida Utley so you would not be interested
How did they make everyone so disinterested in history of the foundational years?
How much of what you discuss, disguised as natural flow, was planned and openly written about?
“To what degree were coalitions like the Popular Front and the Anti-Fascist Movement successfully manipulated by the Soviet secret services?” – The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West
by Sean McMeekin
neo wrote, “Zaphod: You know little about the US but pretend to know a lot. … ”
Perhaps we know the US too well.
Given the choice of a working watch that’s always a half hour behind, and a broken one that’s correct only occasionally, I’d chose both.
And yet, Munzenberg himself—the master propagandist—was, for all his efforts, for all his achievements, for all his brilliance—ultimately himself betrayed by Stalin (i.e., if I have the story right), which tells us—or perhaps more importantly—tells the master propagandists of the current age) what exactly?
That we have a shelf life? (Particularly if we do our “jobs” too well; so well in fact that “Dear Leader” feels threatened….?)
That we are all expendable if “Dear Leader” so decides?
That there is no such thing as loyalty where there is no Law?
Other….?
R2L,
IMO, Communism in its purest form is a perversion of the concept of communion.
Communion inherently rests upon cooperation between its participants.
I said, “Civilization is not possible without cooperation as its basis. Cooperation is the necessary foundation for competition to flourish.”
While accurate, that is an encapsulation of a complex interrelationship. There may be competition internally and/or externally for a particular position within a company or organization. Yet without cooperation within a company or organization it cannot exist.
Companies and individuals may compete with or complement each other. Companies and individuals cooperate in working to achieve a shared goal, such as Kennedy’s “landing a man on the moon” or supporting a war in which their nation is engaged. But without some level of cooperation even tribes are not possible, much less civilizations.
Put most simply, wherein America and totalitarian societies like China differ is that in America, the individual has the right to say no to the State. Nor can the State arbitrarily deny the individual their inherent right to life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness.
In totalitarian societies only the rulers of the State have ‘rights’. He who controls the most guns rules. Communism pretends at equality but in reality “might makes right” because the worst in human nature dictates that without individual rights, the most ruthless and cunning end up ruling. Xi being a notable example.
“CRT is NOT being taught in our schools!!!!!”
Of course it isn’t….
And here’s the reason why the above message is being parroted so vociferously by all the usual suspects:
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2021/11/28/administrator-banned-from-school-grounds-after-exposing-critical-race-theory-ideology/
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
Frederick,
“The filibuster can be, and has been more than once, overridden for a single vote by a simple majority under Senate Rule XX.”
I confess I had to look up Senate Rule XX, which is essentially the parliamentary procedure by which the “nuclear option” is exercised.
It is inherently democratic and essentially anti-Constitutional in that it violates consent of the governed.
“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.” uncertain attribution but accurate nonetheless
It makes no difference that it occurs in the Senate, it’s still mob rule.
Cleavage….as in furin cleavage sites…as in Covid porn…as in starting to peel back the layers of the huge scandal known as Covid19….
“Important observations here on why furin cleavage sites have never been observed in any natural SARS coronaviruses (which takes us right back to Daszak’s 2018 blueprint for inserting furin cleavage sites into SARS coronaviruses).”
(It ain’t pretty.)
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1464274253956718594
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1464274253956718594/photo/1
…which leads us back to this pathetic performance by Il Fauci:
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1464265364716535822
H/T Hans Mahncke twitter feed (all three)
Geoffrey, did you mean to say “…inherently anti-democratic…”?
The Covid diaster, continued:
“A President Betrayed by Bureaucrats: Scott Atlas Exposes The Real COVID Disaster”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/president-betrayed-bureaucrats-scott-atlas-exposes-real-covid-disaster
Key graf:
“…Atlas’s book has exposed a scandal for the ages…”
The MO of the Democratic Party is revealing itself to be one lie after another, one scandal after another, one catastrophe after another…
The only thing they know how to do—other than destroy—is to cover up.
They are simply masterful when it comes to covering up. (To be sure, they have a lot of help in that department….)
Democratic Party Coverup, continued…
The Democrats—with a combination of a brazen usurpation of the federal bureaucracy reinforced by massive media support—are masters of the coverup…
…but the Chinese are peerless….as described by the following magnum opus on the tortured relationship between the Uyghurs and their Chinese neighbors…
https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/the-death-trap-of-difference-or-what-the-uyghurs-understand/
H/T Powerline blog.
(As “Biden” looks on with awe and admiration which “he” dare not admit….)
File under: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…”
Democratic Party coverup, continued:
The Democrats may be masters of the coverup (with tremendous media assistance…)…but the Chinese are absolutely peerless, as described by the following magnum opus on the fraught/tragic/fatal historical relationship between the Uyghurs and the Chinese:
https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/the-death-trap-of-difference-or-what-the-uyghurs-understand/
H/T Powerline blog.
(…which peerlessness may go a long way in explaining the “Biden”-CCP connection.)
File under: Tibet 2.0, but far, far more lethal.
I have said this before, possibly even here: The word “Progressive” always (ALWAYS) reminds me of CANCER, which is progressive, and a KILLER It killed my wife..
@BarryMeislin:
Are you saying then that the Chinese have killed more Uighurs than than the Sacklers and Friends have killed Legacy Americans with dodgy pharmaceuticals and regulatory capture?
I’d be more worried about who’s killing Americans in America than Random People Over There who you would NOT want living next door if they happened to end up as refugees in the USA.
Sure it sucks to be an Uighur. There’s enough suck on this planet to reach from here to Andromeda. Something to be said for Thinking Local.
Xi approves.
“In totalitarian societies only the rulers of the State have ‘rights’. He who controls the most guns rules. Communism pretends at equality but in reality “might makes right” because the worst in human nature dictates that without individual rights, the most ruthless and cunning end up ruling. Xi being a notable example.”
So Xi has killed more people than Bush II and Obama? Leaving Covid out of it (after all, YOUR government funded the research at the Wuhan lab) I’m not sure I’d take that wager.
Do you people really think that the most ruthless and cunning don’t end up running the Deep State? Chuck Schumer is Mister Smithstein? Jaysus wept!
Every political system attracts the worst people. The best you can ever hope for is that you end up with a ruling elite which cannot maximize its utility function by strip mining its own peasantry.
A bit above the pay grades of most Cope-ium Addicts, but the main reason Xi’s been able to get away concentrating power inside the CCP is that he lead the natural and strong reaction against the corruption and creeping GloboHomo ties of the Shanghai Gang (Jiang Zemin’s cronies and successors) who ruled China from senility of Deng up until 2012. They presided over massive growth and obscene graft and levels of rising inequality. It had to stop or go very sideways.
By all means, shed a tear for the Uighurs and put your own country first (would that your own rulers could do that haha).. but know that when you stand against Xi, you also stand for Davos Man and people who have their BVI Lawyers on speed dial. The fact that he’s reigned (sic) in China’s putative globalists and contained and redirected the looting is the main reason China has become unpopular all of a sudden… A bit like when Putin stopped the free-for-all looting of Russia and organized it along more structured lines.
I’ll end this with something various Chinese have said to me in the past when I thought like you guys:
“All very fine, these principles… But just look at yourselves.” If that’s too hard… go look at Newark or Scranton.
Ultimately doesn’t matter what you think of the Chinese or of your own unique destiny as a nation… What matters is can you walk down the street in Newark like it’s 1950. No you cannot. And this cannot be fixed by talk of Muh Chinese or Muh Communism or Muh Constitution. It can only be fixed by putting your own society under the microscope from top to bottom and making difficult changes and admitting errors. Seems to be so terrifying a thought to some that the knee jerk reaction is to look for foreign linkages and do anything but look at yourselves and your own rulers and their true natures and backgrounds and motivations.
“you guys” Xi approves.
@ Neo > “The names are purposely Orwellian.”
As Dodd made clear in her testimony and book.
And to crib from Artfldgr’s excerpts, “Munzenberg had a special talent for bringing communist ideas out of the intellectual ghetto and making them palatable for average working people.
His efforts hinged on a single premise — that ideology functioned best when hidden.”
The only thing different now – nearly a hundred years later – is that they aren’t hiding it much anymore.
That is, they are still hiding the truth from the Legacy Media consumers, while thumbing their noses at the rest of us.
I’m no kind of sinologist. Just a peasant. But I do get tired of folks opining on the Chinese using cartoonish archetypes.
Zaphod:
Yet to most of us here, all you have to offer when it comes to the United States and your disfavored minorities is … cartoonish archetypes. Actually, stereotypes I’d say.
I like that you have a different POV and I do want to understand China better. I enjoy your “I’m a lumberjack and China’s OK” shtick. However, much of your effect IMO comes from dialing down China’s “indiscretions” while dialing up American problems to 11.
How in the world does Mao’s epic mass murders of tens of millions of people equate with the casualties of the Sackler’s opioid business? Or even the Uighurs in camps?
Steven Hayward, reminding us about “Leftists: Fakers and frauds all the way down.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/elizabeth-warren-call-your-office.php
It just occurred to me to wonder what is the jurisprudence, if any, surrounding the very rarely cited Article IV Section 4, part 1 of U. S. Constitution: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” It strikes me that there is interesting material herein for our time.
@Huxley:
China Today. USA Today.
Going on about Mao’s Megadeaths is like having a Holocaust Fetish. Both happened. You know… Like Past Tense and all. And guess what… Chinky also said Never Again. Just that he didn’t hire Edward Bernays to write the press releases and TV Commercials. This constant harping BACK: It’s a way to avoid engaging with issues in the here and now.
I’m interested in 2021. And whose rulers and conglomerations of perverse incentives are doing more or less to drive us all toward various precipices. Nobody is innocent in this game. Not the USA and not the PRC. Not anybody.
My contention (which I encourage intelligent and informed debate about) is that in the current year, Western Liberalism and the driven need to stick noses in where they don’t belong all over the globe is the mad insane jihadist ideology that y’all so busily *projecting* about 🙂
Compared to GloboHomo, the Chinese mindset in 2021 is Less Insane. Less Wrong. That is all.
South China Sea, Xiugrhs, Taiwan, COVID19 all today. Hong Kong? Yesterday. What at tool. Xi approves.
Another post by Steven looks like it’s current news about the deficiencies of the Liberal Universities – and then he notes that
“This observation comes from the late professor of political philosophy Werner Dannhauser, in . . . 1975. Sigh.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/how-much-lower-can-higher-education-sink.php
This is what Bella Dodd said in her Congressional testimony in 1953. It only takes one generation to skew an institution, and we have now had several.
It’s a long excerpt, but it describes a lot of the situations that we’ve been discussing the last few years about the decline of education in general.
[the numbers are reference points in the transcript, and I didn’t fix all the weird line breaks]
https://unconstrainedanalytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Bella-Dodd-June-July-1953-HUAC-Testimony-1.pdf
So you’d best have a Communist Government since you’re never going to get anything other than Communist Teachers. 😛
Gleichschaltung, Baby! It’s supposed to work in the other direction if my memory is correct.
Mind you, this notion that you *can* teach children objectively is why you keep losing. You cannot. It’s back to Who Whom. If you don’t teach the little @#$^ers highly subjective material which advances your agenda, well then someone else will teach them highly subjective material which advances their agenda(s).
You can’t *not* have a state religion or ideology. If you have a state religion of ‘Open-mindedness’ it just means that you’ll be over-run by heretics whom your religion does not permit you to burn. Very Silly.
Zaphod:
Just more rationalize China and rank down America. Not impressed. And more of your “Muh ‘muh Constitution’.”
It’s an easy game to play. If you want intelligent and informed debate, I suggest you start at home.
Also you might consider that GloboHomo is arm-and-arm with China. At some point I don’t see how your arguments in favor of China don’t lead to favoring GloboHomo and making the trains run on time here, once American conservatives are pragmatically crushed in favor of national stability.
Serendipity works late at night.
Linked by a commenter at Powerline on the post by John “What Happens When Leftists Govern a City” (which is about crime, but it’s all connected).
https://cbradleythompson.substack.com/p/the-fundamental-issue-of-our-time
Thompson fills the ellipses with other examples, exhortations, warnings, and so forth.
Worth a read & a ponder & a passing along.
*of course, this is not the first time their machinations were revealed — cf. Dr. Dodd 1953 — but it may be the first time THEY have broadcast their intentions without subterfuge.
**which they now want to extend even further, into pre-K and childcare, since they already own higher education.
Excellent posts, AF, especially the last pair.
Scary, evil, stuff.
Let’s hope that going after the parents will prove to be as big a disaster for the Democrats nationally as it was in the latest elections in Virginia.
And let’s hope that forewarned is indeed fore-armed….
Thanks….
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}}} In the case of communism/socialism, you also have a doctrine that is pernicious in its effects but naturally appeals to idealistic and gullible people – until they finally experience it, and then it’s generally too late.
You can vote yourself into it, but you generally have to shoot your way out of it.
There are occasional exceptions (USSR, anyone?), but that’s not the way to bet.
Ego. The reason Bush thought he could remake Afghanistan was ego. Ditto the reason Obama thought he could persuade the Iranians too “change”. Reason Trump thought he could come to an agreement with North Korea. Reason people like Kerry think they can pursued China to “decarbonize”.
It also drives people like Beni Sanders. He’s never run anything in his entire life or built anything or done anything out of a political office. But he thinks that he could make a socialist system work. “True Socialism has never been tried” is the rallying cry. Been tried on every continent except Antartica and Australia and it came close to the latter. What they are really saying is those other dumb guys couldn’t do it but I’m so smart that I can do it. He can’t.
The trouble is that is the way they all think. I am so much smarter then fillintheblank that I can fillintheblank where the other fillintheblank couldn’t. That’s why it lives eternal and no matter how many failures and dead bodies it racks up.