Pravda Knows Marxism When It Sees It

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

Does this sound like Michael Savage – you know, the radio talk show host banned in Great Britain for " hate speech"?

Well yes it does, but in fact it is taken verbatim from this article in Pravda. Yes, you read that correctly. Pravda. While it’s no longer the official organ of the the Soviet Communist party, it is staffed by some of the same journalists that wrote for it in that era. Having lived the nightmare for some 70 years, they can spot Marxism far better than our own citizens who have been numbed into complacency.

The article specifies how America came to this point: using lessons straight out of the Marxist handbook, and reiterated in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. First you propagandize the youth through the education system:

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics.

You might want to refresh your memory with my Agitprop I, and Agitprop II posts if you’ve forgotten how that part works.

Then you undermine religion:

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another.

And then you coalesce your forces and elect a naked Marxist that the people see as a “visionary leader”who will take care of everything for them so they don’t have to:

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

What might it take to open the eyes of those who refuse to see? We are being taken over by the enemies within and half the country is more concerned with the breakup of Jon and Kate, whoever they are, than the breakup of the capitalist free market system on which America depends. The Pravda article tracks Obama’s 4 month record of executive orders through act after numbing act: the firing of GM’s CEO, the announcement of plans to evaluate executive performance, set salary caps and guidelines for other private sector businesses, the presidential appointments of financial oligarchs to overhaul and determine the outcome of the financial sector, the announcement of a grand plan to redraw the entire tax system to include a new Value Added Tax that has worked so well in funding the folly of other socialist governments. Include in the general folly the proposed government dictated “healthcare system.” That nightmare proposal is dwarfed only by the lunacy of the proposed cap and trade system which is theoretically designed to save us from global warming. As the Pravda writer notes: “the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed.” Rahm Emanuel must be ecstatic – he has certainly not let this crisis go to waste.

Read the entire article. Pass it along to everyone you know, whether they agree with your politics or not. We need people to start thinking again, instead of letting our elected but self-serving politicians in D.C. determine our fate. Stop worrying about saving the planet: our carbon footprint is simply not big enough to leave a permanent mark. Planet earth is going to be just fine: it’s your liberty you should be worrying about, and there’s the added benefit that we can actually do something about that. Hammer your duly elected representatives, vote them out of office in the mid-term. Go to a tea party. Write an editorial. Use your head for something more than a racetrack for a comb. Send this missive on.

FOLLOW-UP

Readers have been having trouble linking to the original PRAVDA article on the PRAVDA.Ru website, as I did when researching my post. For anyone experiencing this problem, I have posted the
full text of the original PRAVDA article here.

Technorati Tags: obama,marxism,pravda,tea parties

In Memoriam: Lucy 1916 - 2009

We'll Meet Again: Vera Lynn (1939)

Let’s be clear: Lucy wasn’t Donna Reed. But to be fair, Donna Reed wasn’t really Donna Reed either. As anyone who’s ever been or had a mother knows, real mothers don’t look like they just walked out of central wardrobe with freshly coifed hair and perfectly applied makeup. Nor do they handle all crises as imagined by a comedic screenwriter.

So I guess Mom wasn’t perfect, which in itself is surprising given that - in her opinion - all 6 of her and Dad’s offspring were. But unlike the Donna Reed world where no crisis was so big that it couldn’t be satisfactorily resolved in a half hour, real life could sometimes be a lot rougher and meaner. It nearly always required a lot more time, effort and grit to gut through. And that’s where Mom excelled.

Raising kids in the 50’s, while easily romanticized, required far more physical effort than we can easily relate to. It’s hard to imagine raising 6 babies without the benefit of Pampers. Or providing 3 square meals a day – including bagged lunches – 7 days a week without the benefit of a microwave, Hamburger Helper or even take-out pizza.

Yet she still had to find time to shop, clean and do laundry between skinned knees and homework consultations. And keep in mind that in those early years doing laundry meant washing with a wringer washer, line-drying (which I assure you had nothing to do with reducing our carbon footprint) and ironing - as permanent press was but a dream. With this schedule it wasn’t surprising then, that “play dates” for kids in that era consisted of Mom saying “Why don’t you kids go outside and play.”

So if Mom didn’t always look and sound like Donna Reed, we’ll forgive her. It didn’t stop her from trying to solve all of our problems, often with what she considered tried and true advice. She condensed a lot of basics into what can only be called clichés. In fact, Mom never met a platitude she didn’t like. And she never saw a problem that couldn’t be resolved with a prayer and the properly selected platitude.

As kids we would roll our eyes at these bromides that seemed so lame in light of what we considered huge problems and issues. And as young adults we would just shrug our shoulders, smile and say, “well, that’s just Mom.” We were not yet old enough, or wise enough, to know that the platitude itself was never intended to be taken at face value. It didn’t provide the answer, just an arrow pointing in the direction that would help us figure things out and work it through.

When our feelings were hurt as a kid by a mean remark, Mom didn’t demand that the school provide anti-bullying classes. She would just tell us “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” Beyond the obvious she was trying to convey important subtexts: that - while we have no control over others behavior - we can control how we respond to their behavior. And that a broken spirit is far worse than a broken arm.

When life delivered a big disappointment, she would counsel us not to “ cry over spilt milk”, usually accompanied by it’s corollary “just get up and try again.” She was doing her best to toughen us up for the inevitable chain of disappointments that assail everyone’s life.

Then there’s this, in response to having been slighted in some way large or small: “Life’s not fair.” It’s my personal favorite: a truism applicable and useful in so many situations that we should be born with the reminder tattooed on our forearm. If everyone would internalize this brief phrase, the world would rest a lot easier. And half the therapists on the planet would be out of work.

Mom’s platitudes were meant to make us strong and independent; two qualities she must have learned from her own parents. The platitudes were her short hand for the wisdom extracted from simple observations on existence and the human condition. She relied on them through the tough times of Dad’s struggle with cancer and his death when she was just 49. And she used them to tough it through the subsequent years as she struggled through the loneliness of his loss, and the financial struggles of raising our still young family.

Not raised in either an age or a family that was given to profuse emoting, she demonstrated her care and love by offering us the wisdom she felt her platitudes contained. They had served her well, and she hoped they would help us cope with the world too.

Even though Mom had always thought her kids to be perfect, I noticed that as she grew older her recollections of our childhood elevated us to near-saints. Hence in her mind, we never fought, never disobeyed, and always adhered to our curfews. Somehow in her alternate universe, we turned into the children of Lake Wobegon. As I reflect on it, I can’t see how that’s all bad. Given the choice of being remembered with all the warts and hard edges of reality, or as the perfect creatures we really aspire to be, who wouldn’t choose perfection?

So in exchange Mom, we promise to always remember you as Donna Reed: never a hair out of place, never a spot of dust in the house, and able to resolve all of our problems in a half hour with a platitude and a prayer.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that he’d spent his entire life learning that platitudes were true. Mom spent hers teaching us just that.

Dewey’s Mom is Dying

You can’t imagine how hard it is to type those words.

We’ll be on a hospice hiatus for the next week.

We hate nature.

A Short History of Detroit

GM leaving Detroit? Yes, everything is on the table. GM’s move from its midtown Albert Kahn designed headquarters to the Renaissance Center nearly 13 years ago launched the latest of many hopes for Detroit’s recovery. Despite the fact that they bought the property in 1993 for one fifth of its original cost two decades earlier, optimists maintained that this shot in the arm was just what the city needed to finally make a turnaround. With the pall of GM’s departure now hanging over the town, people once again have taken to wondering if Detroit can even survive.

I recall with something akin to nostalgia the feeling of optimism many felt for the city when I arrived in 1978. The Renaissance Center had recently opened and its shiny towers were considered a talisman for the city’s future. Coleman Young was the city’s first Black mayor and it was hoped that he could set the city right. Yes, there was great hope for a change that would heal the soul of this riot-scarred city. Yet he taunted suburbanites, alleged that the police were a bigger threat to minorities than crime and managed the city into a quagmire.

Thereafter, every decade or so, some new project sprang up in the financial area downtown to once again trigger the “Detroit Rises from the Ashes” talk. Local boosters even launched a “Say nice things about Detroit” campaign. But the illusion was continuously challenged by the reality of racial politics, cronyism and scandals embedded in the city’s governance starting with Young’s and continuing in all subsequent administrations.

Despite huge infusions of State and Federal funds and crushing Detroit city taxes, the results of decades of liberal Democratic politics lead by a black mayor and a nearly all black city council are dismal. The public schools continue to deteriorate in every conceivable way, resulting in a graduation rate of less than 25%. Yet teachers lobby to maintain the status quo, and even staged a walk-out when a philanthropist offered $200 million to start 15 charter high schools. Basic city services continue to degrade and the citizenry continues it’s flight to the suburbs - the city’s population has dipped well below 1 million from a peak of 2 million - along with retail and other businesses. Once beautiful neighborhoods are decrepit and drug riddled, with block after block of abandoned, run-down or burnt out houses. Crime, drugs and government are the only growth industries in the city.

Coleman Young, who kept business, labor and politics in line with a feared, formidable and corrupt power base, grew too old and sick to run the city. Anyone paying attention was aware that the city was likewise growing older and sicker, but it was considered bad form to mention it publically. Since Young’s retirement in 1993, the succeeding mayors have been appallingly ineffective - to be kind - culminating in Kwame Kilpatrick’s arrogantly corrupt administration and the disgusting spectacle of his trial. (For the record, Kwame was a rising star in the Democratic party, being well connected and speaking at the 2004 Dem Convention. His mother, Congressional Black Caucus leader Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, considered her son the “anointed one,” and most of the media ignored or downplayed the mounting scandals in his administration. Now he’s a convicted felon.) If white leadership had done to this city what 25 years of black leadership has done, there would be rebuke and admonishment that would make the reproach of Bush after Katrina look like child’s play.

Nearly fifty years of liberal Democratic leadership (Detroit has not had a Republican mayor since 1961) has left this once great city a hell-hole of abandoned buildings, populated mostly by the “chronically unemployed” living off the public dole. One liberal administration after another has implemented policy after policy that ensure the only thing alive and well in the city is poverty: thus creating a guaranteed voter base that will continue to vote for whatever Democrat promises to keep the handouts coming. The Democratic regime that has governed Detroit for decades squelches all critics through one of two ploys: leveling the irrefutable charge of racism, or if that’s inappropriate, demanding that additional funding is needed e.g., schools: because god knows, $11,600 per student isn’t enough (private schools charge $6,600, and I doubt many would pay that if their drop out rate was 75%). The death-spiral of liberalism has annihilated Detroit.

So what’s the connection between the city’s demise and GM? It’s one of the corporations headquartered in Detroit that have kept the city afloat for decades. Now many of them, auto related and otherwise, are in distress. Many have been bought, sold, bankrupted or moved to more business friendly areas. The city didn’t cause their failure, but strangling taxes, inflexible labor unions and a culture of pay-to-play politics didn’t make doing business in Detroit any easier or particularly desirable. As long as Detroit could continue to collect taxes and get federal funds, it could afford to replace vision, leadership and private investment with empty advertising slogans and civic cheerleading. Now as they say, the gig is up.

The Autos, too, tried propping up weak vision, leadership (and recently, investment) with advertising. GM and Chrysler’s fatal mistake was taking bailout funds. Now they, like Detroit, are beholden to the Federal government.

What’s the take away? Too obvious: Liberalism is not the answer, it’s the problem. It creates a perpetual underclass that can be manipulated by arrogant politicians. If you add corruption to the mix it guarantees the demise of the society. It will just as certainly ruin any businesses that are subjected to its grasp.

Today, the Big Three are neither big, nor likely to be “three” much longer. Their fate is likely to be momentous in Detroit’s history, but epochal to the country.

Technorati Tags: GM,GM headquarters move,chrysler,renaissance center,detroit,liberal leadership,Coleman Young,Kwame Kilpatrick

Your Government at the Wheel

Classic rookie management decision: in a business downturn, cut the advertising budget. Yep, that’s exactly what the car czar squad did:

Chrysler wanted to spend $134 million in advertising over the nine weeks it's expected to be in bankruptcy -- the U.S. Treasury's auto-industry task force gave it half that.

Sounds like they have plans other than solvency for Chrysler doesn’t it? Or could they really be that stupid?

Either way Motown, time to call the PODS people and start packing. Oh I forgot: GM already is.

Technorati Tags: Chrysler,GM GM headquarters move,automotive advertising,Detroit