Under the Leadership of Comrade Stalin...

Don't Know Much about History

I attended a "Renaissance Weekend Lite" in 1970 sponsored by young progressives for the benefit of some idealistic young folk from our Steel Town. The presentation included a panel of Stalinists -- followers of the infamous Communist Dictator. They self-identified as Stalinists, proudly out-of-the-closet (if they were ever in). Their predictable presentation left me unsurprised and unimpressed. I thought we'd all listen politely and pass on. Instead, I was amazed by the questions from the crowd.

It was Social Justice Warrior softball stuff. The answers were ripped from the pages of Pravda circa 1952, prefaced with "Under the Leadership of Comrade Stalin." Yep, all sorts of wonderful things were achieved in the USSR for the workers or the environment or racial tolerance, which pleased almost everyone but...me. I raised my hand and said, "I can't believe what I'm hearing here..." followed by a brief summary of, you know, what actually occurred (including a dead Caspian Sea as well as a lot of dead Ukrainians).  My little rant brought a hostile frown to the face of the panel and immediately ended the questioning period. I guess I pooped The Party.

Later the organizers told me they were quite impressed by what I said. They explained they wanted to provide a variety of viewpoints. I said, "Did I miss the Young Republicans?" I guess I came mighty close to being one because they never invited me back.

Think of it as "Wet-landia"

Commentary: ‘The Swamp’ is everywhere — even in Republican Tennessee

I call the conglomeration of special interests that controls this country The Crony Class. The Crony Class has its Crony Class Consciousness and Crony Class interests. Its chief interest is a continually growing government, used to dispense favors and money to members of the Crony Class and the retainers who support their demands.

Naturally, they cannot be upfront about any of this. I would rather discuss the 2,200 billion dollars of borrowed money (just this year!) they are using to keep themselves in power, as well as the tens of thousands of additional pages of regulations they are using to solidify their class interests and pick winners (themselves) and losers (everyone else). They would prefer I focus my attention on the tribulations and trials (literally) of Donald Trump -- not that I blame them.

After all, they want to control the 7,200 billion dollars flowing through Washington DC every year (and grow it to 10,000 billion) and take control of everything in the nation through the regulatory and retaliatory bureaucracy. These are high stakes, and it would take a collection of saints to avoid temptation (and there are far more sociopaths in this class than saints). So they put some people in jail who shouldn't be there and release others who should be incarcerated, even when that seems detrimental to their political interest.

However, convicting the innocent while freeing the guilty displays their power and prepares their retainers for the harshers measures that will be inevitably called for. You see, their appetite grows with the eating, and they'll soon be short of food. Unfortunately, the rest of us will be starving (on account of the bad weather caused by Henry Ford providing cars to the workers, who should be kept in their place). I call this future end-state Feudalism with the Right People in Charge.

The snake that eats its tail also bites its ass.

 Hmmm. More on France's "Summer of Love."

US State Department-Trained French Activist/Arsonist Pouring Fuel on the Fire

"Critical Theory" started in Europe after World War One with the Frankfurt School in Germany.

Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism. He described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them".

Intellectuals of the World Unite! You've nothing to lose but your mental chains -- and maybe your mind.  

When the National Socialists took power, several prominent figures fled to North America and helped the theory take root in Major American Universities. After World War II, some French thinkers contributed their thinking (or what passes for such) to the movement. Some simple slogans in English made it to US campuses in the 60s. After a massive investment in "Higher Education," we got Critical Race Theory and expensive, preachy Hollywood Movies -- not to mention riots and rotting inner cities.

So that particular flaming bag of poop has landed on France's doorstep. It's like "return to sender."

As for the US State Department, it is chock-full of the sort of people "Europe" tells us to listen to. If it is any consolation, they also want to subvert the US, not just France.

Hitler, the Socialist

From Tik History:

Hitler's Socialism: The Evidence is Overwhelming

Go get overwhelmed.

In my youth, I thought I was a Socialist. I was reading Upton Sinclair, the popular socialist novelist, and the socialists in his books about post-WWI Europe were good people and that was enough for me. Then he introduced the father of Fascism, the thug Mussolini -- only "the Moose" was a Socialist when he made his appearance. The National Socialist street-fighting "brown shirts," were socialist true believers brawling with international socialist "black shirt" true believers (Anti-fa, as it happens). An idealistic young German Piano prodigy becomes an idealistic SS commander.

The Bolshevik creators of the United Socialist Soviet Republics attract a menagerie of Western leftists to Moscow and St. Petersburg (aka Petrograd/Leningrad), including anarchists and syndicalists and every-other ist -- who then bail when things go south but carry the flame of revolution home with them.

True, Sinclair did argue that Hitler/Lenin/Stalin weren't true socialists but I had to ask, how do you tell the difference between the murderous and the benign kind of socialism? In later years I wondered: is fake socialism the only true socialism? Is the grass-roots socialist mantra, "fool me again" and "all power to the Sociopaths!"

As a tenth grader in 1964, I had to admit that Upton Sinclair sure could write. He not only talked me into his beliefs, he talked me right back out of them.

A Telluride Tell-all

If you ask yourself, "where does this lead?" and the answer is "nowhere good," then don't ask the question.

A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell

If the seminar is slow food, the anti-racist workshop put on by college-age students is a sugar rush. All the hashtags are there, condensed, packaged, and delivered from a place of authority. The worst sort of anti-racist workshop simply offers a new language for participants to echo—to retweet out loud.

Way back in the misty-misty, I saw Pulp Fiction with a progressive black friend and afterward said that Quintan Tarantino must have a special license for the prolific use of the N-word. My friend seemed both baffled and distressed by that comment. To me, it was a simple display of movement power. Think of an individual who can say, "You, right here, can use this word but you, over there, can't," and be obeyed -- and obeyed because they can enforce their will. That's a display of power.

I'd noticed that the left often defends the guilty (the murderers Sacco and Vanzetti) and persecutes the innocent (Bret Kavanagh), which puzzled me. I mean, there are plenty of innocent people who need defending. I figured it was a recruitment tool as well as a display of power. Anyone can defend the innocent but it takes a potential activist -- a person willing to commit to the cause and the "new morality" the cause promotes -- to defend the guilty. Once you accept that the murderer is the true victim and the innocent defender of the "loathsome" status quo is the real criminal, you are on your way. How about a donation?

More Lite than Light!

During the first Obama/Biden administration I decided light opera was the best format for commentary. With music and song, it would float above the mess the way those mountains in Avatar float above planet Pandora. So this Opera will not just be light, it’ll be anti-gravity: No matter how grave the situation, it will be anti-the-gravity of the situation.

The Opera is set on the island estate of the multi-billionaire Artful Shortseller. Art hosts “The International Conference to Solve All the World's Problems with One Foul Swipe.” What is the foul swipe, you ask? Sorry, you are not supposed to ask and I'm not allowed to answer.

It starts with a big production number. The new President's team marches through the gates like parading Olympic athletes planning to disrespect the flag. As they enter they sing:

The DC Press Corps and Officials

With Diplomatic Creep,
We cross History’s Stage.
Both shy and meek
As The World Turns, amazed.

Praise we spread in full,
Without a boastful word,
We give credit to our Bull,
Not just the nagging herd!

President Biden

(Wanders about as he mumbles):

Salute the Marines, Mr. Jill Biden. Salute. What.

(Bumps into the scenery; Consults his mePad; begins to sing.)

Like a mentally stable-man
World leaders, I’ll approach.
One I’ll treat like a door-man,
as I deliver my reproach.
But them that Trump has cowed,
I’ll look squarely in the knees!
As I offer a gracious bow,
And sincere apollo-gee.

Hail, hell! What do I do next? 

(Checks pad) 

"Tell European Nations
Of Power abrogations!"
But Poo-tin calls me a tease.
So I’ll implore “believe me, please!”

I call this number, “History Brought to Boil by a Cracked Pot.”

At the center of Art’s estate is “The Mean-Well.” This is a deep well, as well as a mean well. For some mysterious reason, well-meaning people (mostly voters) get sucked in, fall past the mean, and even plunge below average, which drags down the average, causing the mean to become even meaner. These folks don't mean to be mean, they mean to be equitable. What is the powerful attractive force of the Mean-Well? Could it be the mean-welling of the Mean-Well?

Actually, the attractive force is the fabled Lost Thirteenth Law of an Admired Marxist (choose one). This lost law is forty thousand pages of progressive legislation that, if adopted in its entirety, will yield the forty million pages of regulation that will, in the end, make all this stuff work. The Thirteenth Law was typed before white-out, back when progressives didn’t make mistakes. However, it has been rewritten by AIs (Artificial Intellectuals) using out-white (and there’s a lot of that in it).

Thank dog this is a work of fiction.

The Opera needs a love story but not to worry: with so many malignant narcissists involved, it has lots of love stories.