It seems there is an entire generation, minds muddled with bullshit, that completely believes the "Socialism/communism has never *really* been tried before!" argument. Of course, they are referring to the elusive, magical *pure* socialism, not that perverted shit we saw in all those shithole countries that called themselves communist.
I grew up during the Cold War, in an atmosphere that was decidedly anti-communist, though I never learned much of anything about communism at school.
I was aware that people in communist countries were not allowed to just leave their countries, due to the occasional, spectacular stories of those "defecting" to the West. (And how often does anyone "defect" to the East?)
As a 20 year old, I realized how little I knew about communism, so I endeavored to remedy that, by first reading The Marxist Reader (with Das Capital, the Manifesto, and assorted essays by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin). Then I visited the library, and read everything I could find on the Russian Revolution, and Soviet history from the 1920's to the 1980's.
I grew up during the cold war too. I remember the fear that the Soviets might be able to do things better than us because of their command economy. Read the Alan Drury novels and you will get taste of what that fear was like. ADVISE AND CONSENT and the rest.
Speaking of memory holes, not long ago I saw the first episode of a Netflix documentary series about World War II.
It depicted the German invasion of Poland from the West. I expected to see the corresponding Soviet invasion of Poland from the East, next, but it never came. Instead the show went directly to the German attack on the Soviet Union.
Wow -- that's really bad history! What happened to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?? Not to mention Hitler's invasion of France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, all of which occurred before he invaded the USSR. Nothing like pro-commie distortion of history!
My son's middle-school history curriculum in 2020 at Dwight-Englewood School was "America sucks." The reading was Zinn, Kendi, and several other authors who had a solely negative perspective on the US. It was taught by a guy who told us he was "challenging the narrative" of American history. He denied being "woke" at a parent-teacher conference, but I just took a look at his LinkedIn and his politics are quite clear.
We talked about that, but neither of us felt confident enough to be teachers. A good friend of mine was homeschooled and wound up a double major at Harvard, so I know there are success stories, but I also know some parents who should not be homeschooling their kids.
Oh, I'd love to. The MF wouldn't put my son in the honors class, even though he was in multiple honors classes, and history was his favorite subject. Just flat-out wouldn't do it. I'm certain the reason was political.
On the bright side, his LinkedIn suggests he's having trouble keeping a job.
He's paying about $60K per year for this BS. Only a private school could even get away with this because the curriculum is not regulated the way it is in public schools. I mean there is certainly BS in public schools as well but the textbook and official curriculum could not and are not as 'woke' as what is described here and to pay top dollar for that is insane. WTF.
We were aware that there was a DEI department headed by a woman with a "doctorate" (her dissertation was 319 pages of nonsense) but we had assumed that the administration was smart and keeping her at bay. After the whistleblower we realized shit was rotten from the Head of School down and it was time to GTFO.
Would anyone consider that Capitalism has ever *really* been tried, in the same pure perfect sense that they apply to Communism in this argument? I would say that it hasn't, but what would they say? I would also suggest that if Capitalism kind of works even in a flawed form, but Communism only works in a perfect, pure form, then that's a big argument against it, since even if it did work, it's clearly far too brittle a system to rely on. Apparently any imperfection renders it entirely unworkable.
So true. Anyone who even suggests that argument has merit, meaning that communism was never really tried, is a brain-washed idiot. I've tried once or twice explaining to the "true believer" that communism really means a one-way street to an authoritarian dictatorship cloaked in hypocritical platitudes of a workers' paradise, which is really a paradise lost. The brain-washed masses, those drunk on the cool-aid, should be forced to experience it for themselves, some place far from here, say Cuba or North Korea. Just so they're playing out their destructive fantasies nowhere in my country and preferably nowhere near my continent (although that's probably too much to ask).
Bingo. Collectivism presupposes the laws of human nature disappear with the correct political ideology. Who's the greedy one? The one who prefers to keep and disperse their own earnings? Or the those who use want to acquire it via government force to use "for the common good"?
History tells us those who determine the common good suffer from the same human fralities as the rest of us. Except worse
She's not a very good writer in that she wants to tell her readers EVERYTHING; but I have to say that Ayn Rand predicted today's current political state of affairs and human nature with surprising accuracy.
I read The Fountainhead first in the late 70's and then in the late 80's Atlas Shrugged. Like I said, they're long, looooong reads. But...
The dame nailed it.
If you haven't; give them a read (yeah, I know; nobody reads fiction no more). It's well worth the time, esp since Matt & Walter are on an Orwellian focus.
Rand's got a lot to say, and says it ALL; but is also absolutely correct.
Frank Herbert was visionary. Dune is amazing. Too bad about the movie adaptations. They don't capture the small details that convey the deeper truths beyond the plot.
Communes are the only places true communism can work, where people are free to leave if they get tired of the arrangement. Any nation trying to impose communism on its citizens, will have to use massive repression, because people don't take kindly to having the "government" seize their possessions or their businesses, in order to divvy them up between those who demonstrate more "need."
Yep, evergreen and ever stupid. Even if we accept the premise, it means that "pure Comminism", whatever that's supposed to mean, is essentially impossible to implement, given the scope and scale of the attempts we've seen.
Oh, and the attempts have resulted in the death of tens of millions, not to mention poverty and national level catastrophe and the hollowing out of millions of souls.
Continuing the attempt is a damnable exercise, even if there is some non-zero chance of finally succeeding--which there isn't.
It's odd. They're supposed to be pure materialists, yet they seem to believe in some kind of Platonic ideal of communism that will someday manifest from the world of forms.
I've just pulled a number of Google-search definitions of fascism as they seem remarkably like ... governments that declare themselves Marxist:
For example:
-- "a governmental system led by a dictator [politburo] having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism ..."
-- "Philosophy of government that stresses the primacy and glory of the state, unquestioning obedience to its leader[s], subordination of the individual will to the state's authority, and harsh suppression of dissent."
-- "Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual."
About the only difference between it and Marxism is racial differentiation.
The most important thing for me is free speech, and neither the USSR nor the Nazis allowed that.
I got into a rather heated argument recently in a live chat with a lady who was absolutely incensed at my criticism of the Soviet Union. She asked me whether I knew of "the achievements of the USSR," & I told her I wasn't interested in their "achievements," because I cared more about liberty, and the fact that writers were being shipped off to slave labor camps for 25 years.
She came back with a hearty "Fuck You!" and has not returned to that chat for weeks.
"On the one hand, the workers’ movement is increasingly developing towards a factual division into adherents and opponents of “defence of the fatherland”"
The program is the same but the rhetoric has some opposites.
For example, in communism, the party embodies the will of the people and the state is a tool to enact that will, which is supposed to "wither away." Whereas in fascism, the state embodies the will of the people, and the party is a tool to bring about that state.
In communism, bourgeois society alienates man from his true socialist self, and recovers the ability to be a socialist when society is destroyed, whereas in fascism, man is alienated by being excluded or exiled from society and is saved by participation in the state.
In communism, merit is whatever benefits the powerful, and that's bad, so we won'thave merit, and in fascism merit is whatever benefits the powerful, ans that's good, so we will have "merit".
Yes, Fascism split off from the Communist International in 1919 because of 'Socialist-Chauvinism' which we would call nationalism. Here is what Vladimir Lenin had to say:
"The opportunists (and deserters from the workers’ party such as Mussolini) practised social-chauvinism [Nationalism], lauding (as Plekhanov did) “gallant Belgium”, thereby shielding the policies, not of a gallant, but of a bourgeois Italy, which would plunder the Ukraine and Galicia"
The Commie argument. You are in a 4 story building. Commies convince you that you can fly. They tell you to go jump out the second story window and flap your arms. You fall and break your leg. Then they say you weren’t high enough go up to the roof jump off and flap your arms. You die. Then they say you didn’t flap your arms fast enough.
Indeed. If only the evil capitalist would cooperate, it would work perfectly. Those bastards.
Gotta go. Uber Eats is at the door. Then after dinner I have to set up my new Iphone and after that I will blog on evil capitalist exploitation of the globes natural resources.
Communism = communes have existed in it's pure form. From AI: "Most American communes ended due to a mix of practical, social, and economic challenges. Key factors included internal conflicts and lack of effective leadership, difficulties sharing resources and responsibilities, disputes over land ownership, economic strain from lack of income or resources, and the effects of drug and alcohol abuse among some members". Now, multiply that by a nation population. See what you get. Oh wait! We have seen...
I read a book about a commune years ago, and most people wound up leaving due to the slackers in the group. Then I met a lady who had lived in a commune, and she told me that the biggest issue for those in her commune had been disputes between children, which grew into disputes between adults.
I still say that communes are the only places "true communism" can ever work, but expecting humans to act against their own best interests will always be a hurdle.
It’s pretty classic that no one ever thinks to mention that “true capitalism” probably hasn’t ever been tried either, right? If all the cronies and corruption were weeded completely out, lots of systems are probably viable. But that will never, ever happen. And I much prefer crony capitalism to crony socialism. The cronies aren’t going away.
My theory is that meritocracy always degenerates into cronyism. It’s the natural result of our being social beings. Pure meritocracy would view people as commodities—items with X quantities of Y merit. Social beings resist such commodification. So, you end up picking the guy who, in some way, you are humanly comfortable with, the guy you can spend all day with in the next cubicle. Eventually this process becomes one of elite self-perpetuation.
I know it’s trite, but with the invention of affordable travel, I would simply leave if I thought the country I was living in was a great evil! What people say, tells you less than what they do.
Those in the USSR and East Germany were not allowed to leave. That was part of Communism. Still is, in North Korea.
The Chinese Commies allow movement outside the country only if they benefit from it. Such as their citizens abroad spying or stealing patents for them or otherwise infiltrating.
This is one of those unappreciated spirals in emerging socialism. When socialist solutions to problems fail as they inevitably do---for obvious reasons, we can't centrally plan even the most fundamental part of the economy, agriculture---socialist planners will look for an explanation. The first explanation will be capital flight, people leaving with their money, and in response, the socialist planners will institute capital controls to prevent people from taking money out of the system. When as inevitably happens, people abandon their money and start leaving just to escape the misery, the socialist planners institute exit controls on the theory that because the state educated and cared for you despite the desires of you or your family, the state's investment in you creates an ownership stake in you; you won't be allowed to leave because you supposedly owe everyone else. These developments follow one another like night follows day.
We've already seen hints of these tendencies in America. Currently, California greedily goes after whatever its bureaucrats and lawmakers think can be taxed after a resident leaves the state to establish residency elsewhere.
Despite the set of tax obligations being referred to as an exit tax, it's not a bona fide tax for just leaving the state, but the California legislature sometimes takes up the idea. Look for it to happen in the future, and look for New York to attempt the same.
The danger for America is that the socialists in America do not operate in a closed system: because their states' residents have the freedom to move to another state, the socialists don't have to accept failure and can fall back on one more excuse. They can shift blame to the country as a whole, claim that the reason for the failure is that the system isn't closed nationally and run everywhere on socialist principles, and sadly, there are a lot of people who will believe despite the fact that historical examples like the USSR followed the same path and failed miserably.
Interesting info. I search out the patterns too. Always tells me a great deal.
Britain under the current Labour govt. is attempting the same thing you describe.
Two other red flags I have observed -- note when the private home of a politician or businessman mysteriously sells for a large amount over asking, though there seemed to be little competition for it. It is a way for wealthy Communist infiltrators to buy influence. I have seen several cases of this, the most notable being the sale of the marital home of Prince Andrew years ago. And later, he was accused of involvement with a Chinese spy. But the lower-downs do it too.
Or when a person desperate for influence announces that someone higher on the totem pole is going to be the godparent of their child, which under normal circumstances is reserved for close family members practicing Christianity. These would-be godparents are not even personal friends or relations, but other political or business figures. The odd thing is that none of the parties had ever expressed an interest in Christianity prior to this, but then they are falling over themselves about their roles in a baptism. Former Canadian politician and WEF member Chrystia Freeland (from a Ukrainian Nazi family) named current PM and WEF-man Mark Carney as a godparent to her child years ago, then they ran against one another in the last election. Naming influential "godparents" is now a cynical political move by the power-hungry to announce a strategic alliance. More than ironic that the world's eugenicists are going around staging Christian baptisms as a tactic.
And that's on top of citizenship-based taxation, in which you are subject to filing federal income taxes wherever you live in the world (ignoring that you are paying taxes wherever you live). And the US strongarmed most governments around the world to collect and send along all your banking information to the IRS (through "intergovernmental agreements").
Thanks to the US government's strongarm tactics, US citizens are now barred from opening bank accounts in some countries because of the onerous reporting requirements and potential for draconian penalties if they mess it up.
I looked at the IRS link on the expatriation tax, and the threshold is shockingly low. I guess that the IRS is supposed to make a determination about the reason for your expatriation---the tax is only supposed to apply if you renounce your citizenship to escape your tax burden, so if I got the right idea from browsing the rules, the average nobody should in theory, be exempted---but the IRS's ability to be flexible in the matter doesn't change the fact that this is a turn on the downward spiral that I mentioned in the original post. So sad.
Even if the IRS doesn't ding you, should you want to renounce your citizenship you would still have to pay non-trivial fee (last I checked, $2350 USD) in order to renounce.
Yeah, I didn't know about the expatriation tax, but I did know about the other problems. I lived in Beijing for four years, and filing taxes even though I didn't owe anything was quite the pain in the neck. I spent roughly eight to twelve hours each year filling out stupid tax forms. My understanding was that the only other country to consider foreign earnings to be taxable income at the time was Eritrea.
I also knew about the banking situation, and fortunately for me, at the time that I lived in China, a lot of people including me were still paid in cash and dealt almost entirely in cash. (China didn't go to tap-to-pay systems with smart phones until after I left.)
Money-laundering is one of their most popular hobbies. In Canada, CCP infiltrators money-laundered our whole real estate industry to exorbitant asking prices, so that normal people can seldom afford to buy a home now.
I went to Venice in 1991. The parking lots in the land areas around Venice were packed with buses full of people who after the fall of the Berlin Wall were finally able to see parts of the world forbidden to them. It was obvious they were living and sleeping in the buses while they were there. Cooking outside around them as well.
I love responding to my Lib friends, who are forever threatening about "Moving to Canada/Portugal/wherever" that they should really follow through and do it. I usually get a look of surprise, because most of them aren't really serious about doing it, they just think they're scoring points with their Blue MAGA bubble komrades.
2) I've spent significant chunks of my life living, and working, in Canada, and am married to a Canadian. I'm fairly familiar with both the immigration and labor laws for foreigners.
3) Reading comprehension is obviously a big challenge for you. Are you a product of the Canadian education system?
So your idea is they’re all independently wealthy and don’t need to work in order to live? Thanks for agreeing that they can’t just permanently move to Canada.
"My idea?" I'm simply repeating the talking points of some people that I know, and am stating no opinions about living or working in Canada whatsoever.. This must be really hard for you to keep up with.
We are ignorant of your immigration laws mainly because we don’t give a shit . Why would we? Most of the population lives within 30 miles of our border for a reason.
So don’t comment on things you’re ignorant about, if you don’t want your ignorance to be pointed out to you. And are you trying to suggest that Canadians mostly live in the south to be closer to Americans? They live in the south because it’s warmer than the north
You live close to the border because that’s where the jobs are. I’ll comment on any damn thing I choose. You fucking Canucks would still be marrying polar bears were it not for the us . don’t act so holy.
My friend sold her home, car etc.. she was going to move to Sicily .. great grandparents from there. No problem right? Wrong. When asked if she had a job, she’s retired, they denied her dual citizenship. She’s crying on FB now. She can’t even fathom living here 3 more years with Trump. Now here’s a true example of TDS, just jump ship don’t do any homework. Those other countries might not want you!
Most countries you might want to live in have stricter rules than we do. If you don't qualify for Italian citizenship by ancestry (the law was recently changed to make that more difficult), you need to demonstrate that you bring with you a secure livable income and gain an intermediate working fluency with Italian. The food is great but most of the time the Italian bureaucracy will drive a sane American around the bend.
Why would you conclude he was ignorant about immigration law? He was simply telling people to go do what they were threatening to do. Canada was just one of three places.
Your response suggests you are simply trying to incite reaction, not thought. Perhaps the ignorance in question is your own lack of self awareness?
I once got yelled at by a friend who told me my agreeing with controlled borders was equivalent to North Korea and East Germany. Is that the definition of a straw man argument? Those regimes’ goals are to KEEP PEOPLE IN, not out. What an odd way of thinking.
Ghana, for one. My former SIL literally flew out today to move to Ghana. Former British colony. People speak English. I saw a photo of her newly built house. It's lovely! 200K. So, find the US intolerable? Move to Ghana!
Let's see how long she lasts in Ghana. Black or white, she won't last long. My favorite picture of my several month stint working in Ghana is the sign (common in upper class residential neighborhoods): No Defecating Here
"A black American woman who allegedly moved to Ghana to flee what she described as “white racism” in the U.S. is now begging to come back. The issue? Africa isn’t the safe haven she quite imagined.
The unnamed woman went viral Tuesday after several conservative pages shared a video of her unleashing a verbal tirade about her experiences in Ghana. Headline USA could not independently verify the authenticity of the date of the video.
“I’d rather go back to America and deal with the racism in America before I sit here in Africa and deal with the bullsh*t robbery, the bullsh*t fraud, the bullsh*t scams, the bullsh*t too expensive, the bullsh*t not having no snacks, the bullsh*t not having no food, the bullsh*t electricity, the bullsh*t hot water,” she claimed.
The woman also complained about her house being invaded by “bullsh*t animals,” such as scorpions and “big *ss spiders, big *ss lizards, colorful lizards you ain’t never seen before—all in the room with you, sleeping with you.”
According to her, locals constantly attempt to get money from her because they believe she is wealthy."
But the Communists may not let you out, Joe. They used to shoot would-be escapees from Communist East Germany. Until 1989. That’s what all the barbed wire fences and armed guards were about. Nothing to do with affordable travel. Had to do with the people there not wanting to be killed.
American citizens who have a job offer in Italy, or wish to work in Italy, either temporarily or permanently, must be provided with a work permit obtained by the prospective employer, and must obtain a work visa from the Italian Consular authorities BEFORE coming to Italy. A written job offer or an employment contract is not regarded as a valid document for working in Italy: the prospective employer is required to apply for preliminary clearance from the provincial employment office (Ufficio Provinciale del Lavoro e della Massima Occupazione) in the proposed city of employment by submitting evidence that persons qualified for the position offered to a non-resident foreigner are not available in the local labor market. If clearance is granted, the prospective employer is further required to obtain a work permit with the approval of the regional and central authorities. The permit is then sent to the worker so that he or she may apply for the entry visa. There are Italian consular offices in most major cities in the U.S. The procedure for professional and self-employment is basically the same as that described above. A permit to reside in Italy for the purpose of employment is obtained after arrival in the country from the central police office (Questura) having jurisdiction. To apply for permit, you must submit a valid Italian visa and work permit.
I'm sure that's all he was aiming for. And Matt took the bait. And we got the greatest paragraph with the most commas in the history of prose. Everybody wins.
And the theatrical musical, as well as the possibly as many as 1,000 brilliant popular songs which comprise what is commonly referred to as The Great American Songbook. ( Yes, I know about European operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan, and "revue," but the musical itself, whether musical drama or musical comedy, gelled here. )
One wonders what claims Edwards would make for his (apparently) preferred governance system. Can't think of anything notable besides death, tyranny and the destruction of the human spirit produced by Communism and Socialism.
I was born behind the iron curtain and now live in Canada. What America and the West in general allowed to fester within the walls of its schools and colleges boggles my goddamned mind.
so u think it was a mistake to turn all our educational institutions over to dimwitted zealots drunk on jargon who hate us, our country, culture, history (and hate themselves most of all) and who want to "radically deconstruct" aka destroy it?!
It's called the Critical Theory of History, and was introduced by people like Zinn and Cloward in the 50's 60's. The idea was to analzed, evaluate a society by everything they did that was wrong. That's how we got to today; a lopsided chart.
I'm more of a Marcuse guy when it comes to malevolent Marxists who tried to install a program of "socialist liberation", meaning they would get to be omnipotent philosopher-kings dictating what we'd be allowed to say, write, think, etc.
Also Marcuse has to be History's least grateful refugee, we saved him from Hitler's gas chambers and he paid us back with constant denunciations.
Have you read Matt's takedown of Marcuse? Was brilliant.
The beauty of free speech is not that it lets us wallow in self-praise but just the opposite. No nation is perfect but the ones that allow criticism and dissent are far and away the best. All of you seem to want to quash that freedom. I see it as the very thing that makes people want to be better simply because they know they CAN be better. To me that is freedom.
there's a lot of this "revolutionary" vomit online. Marcuse was hoping Angela would do some killing so he could feel young and alive but not risk being arrested or deported.
I agree that it was Herbert Marcuse and his ilk from the Frankfurt School, transplanted to the US in the 50s, and given faculty positions, which spread the Marxist poison on this continent.
Angela Davis was a prominent and fawned-over grad student of Marcuse. You can easily see where her indoctrination came from.
You're about 30 years too late. The operation to destroy Normal American culture began in the 1920's. The Comintern genius of covert influence, Willi Muenzenberg conceived of the operation, sent out his operators to penetrate American cultural transmission (Hollywood, education/academia, the media), and created the "America sucks" belief system that they inserted into our culture.
"Covert Influence Payload
Babette Gross, wife of KGB agent Willi Muenzenberg, explained the content of the Soviet payload to Stephen Koch:
You claim to be an independent-minded idealist.
You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break.
You believe in open-mindedness.
You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country.
You’re frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the workingman.
You think the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works.
You believe in peace.
You yearn for international understanding.
You hate fascism.
You think the capitalist system is corrupt.
This payload exactly matches today’s PC-Progressive message. The message that Soviet covert operators propagated through American Willing Accomplices. The Willing Accomplices, wittingly or unwittingly, spread the anti-American message. And this message bloomed and grew into the pernicious set of taboos and strictures that we call PC today."
This reminds me of hearing Kruschev say, "We will bury you without firing a shot". Seeing the pervasive cultural rot and political chaos in which we now live, I understand what he meant. It was his very open threat of destroying us from within. The question now is, How much longer will the Fifth Column exist? Where are the forces that will confront it? Trump has begun the gutting, but has a short time in which to complete the excision.
It is much more damaging to a culture to penetrate minds of a whole nation with brainwashing, than the bodies of thousands of soldiers with bullets (although those soldiers may argue the point).
Americans do not yet understand, by and large, that masses of them have been collectively brainwashed by totalitarian forces. This isn't the way that Hollywood told them brainwashing was supposed to look.
By Khruschev's time the KGB/Comintern operations were pretty much over--and they'd purged and killed all the operators, including Muenzenberg.
The power of covert influence, though, is that the messages implanted in the 20s-40s in American culture were self-seeding--the spread internally, like cancer, or a virus.
They only came to full fruition with Obama and the Democrat party of that time. By then, to be a Democrat, one had to fully subscribe to PC-Progressive belief system (straight from Muenzenberg):
They had a little help. Totalitarianism crept in from post-war Europe. And Americans fell for the scam of self-denigration, starting in the 60s. They were carefully groomed to hate themselves. BIG mistake!
The self denigration began earlier, blossomed in the 20's and 30's with the rise of the labor movement which was heavily infested with Communists. In spite of the fact that Communism lost its lustre as Stalin's atrocities were revealed and with the failure of Communism in Eastern Europe following WWII, the Hate America retained its allure in our main cultural structures, academia, media and the Democratic Party. Hating America morphed from being a serious political movement to a sophistication signal, and currently to a virtue signal as intense as any religion. As a result, it is resistant to confrontation by facts. It's like having lead infested soil surrounding your house: you can't just cover it over; you have to dig it out entirely and replace it with healthy soil. Fly your flag; it will help.
Gortroe, you are preaching to the converted. I understand this material at least as well as you do.
Yes, America was infiltrated with Communists by the 20s and 30s, but they did not have the magic of mass communication to spread this too far beyond their own circles. And they framed their Communism in such a way that the majority of Americans still shied away from it.
It was by the 60s, with the Baby Boom generation coming of age, that the totalitarians saw real possibilities. Their secret weapon was to catch the Baby Boomer minds through their own vanities -- meaning, the need to appear cool and progressive. And so they did. With a lot of help from mass communications and the entertainment industry. Hooked them on addictive drugs which were newly flooding the country too. All fun, fun, fun! Who could argue? Taught them to hate America, hate Western civilization, and destroy everything that had any meaning. The Boomer youth were easy marks.
"Yes, America was infiltrated with Communists by the 20s and 30s, but they did not have the magic of mass communication to spread this too far beyond their own circles."
The beauty of the covert influence operations that destroyed Normal American culture was that "Communists" were not needed.
The Comintern influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg, created "Hate Normals and Feel Good" front organizations, that had no obvious connection with Communism.
His first operation was the protests (America is a foreigner-hating hell-hole!) against the Sacco & Vanzetti arrests and trial. Closely followed by the Scottsboro Boys (America is a racist hell-hole!) operation.
He then targeted the media, academia/education (Dr George S. Counts), and Hollywood. His agents formed front organizations that inserted the Hate-America payload into our culture.
He was only wrong in his belief that his work would bear fruit in a few years. It ended up taking 60 or so years. The Hate-America payload grew and grew, infiltrating the three transmission centers of our culture, emerging in full force in the 1980s as Politically Correct Progressivism--the belief system that America is wrong and bad, and must be "changed" (read "destroyed"). PC-Prog became the only acceptable beliefs in the Democrat party, until it was required by the time of Obama.
Kent, you might be interested in this book, written by a former RCMP Director; I think you would recognize many of the tactics described:
"Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party" by Garry Clement
The Chinese Communists have one particular favoured tactic of infiltrating -- through Buddhist monasteries and related organizations. The popularizing of Buddhism amongst the North American middle-class for decades may have been something of a set-up. So that all Buddhist organizations would be trusted and familiar and attractive to North Americans. As in Gotcha!
The Chinese have been quite active with influence operations in the USA, and probably Canada, too, since then. Their more overt influence operations (Confucious Centers) have been called out, though:
The inheritors of Muenzenberg's influence (covert and overt) operational template against the USA are the Mossad and Israel. The organizations that pump Israeli influence payloads into our culture are massively funded. The recent $7000 per post payments to American influencers is more overt, but their covert influence operations have touched virtually every "conservative" commentator for the last couple decades.
I knew of Willi Münzenberg as a Communist activist and propagandist who eventually left, travelled Europe and called himself a socialist. He was a con-man too. Very intelligent, but without conscience. Possibly a Psychopath. Died in 1940.
He was aware of, and used to his satisfaction, the tactic of bamboozling the vulnerable innocents (he would have done well plying his trade in Canada).
He created front organizations -- much as the Communist Chinese do now through their United Front network -- in which he claimed to be carrying out benign good works, while actually funding further tools of Communism. This is a standard totalitarian ploy. We see it amongst the Western leftists today; they virtue-signal with groups of compassionate-sounding names, while under the surface these groups advance social destruction.
Comintern was an earlier version of the concept of destructive Globalism. Although they did not advertise it as destructive, but quite the opposite.
Muenzenberg was a Comintern covert influence operations genius. Your description of him is about 25% of the whole/real story. Most sources on him do not fully grasp his power and operational genius. A really horrible book on him is "The Red Millionaire" by a professor who totally misunderstands espionage operations. Beside my own book, Willing Accomplices, linked above, is Stephen Koch's "Double Lives." Koch grasped Muenzenberg's importance during his lifetime, but fails to realize that Willi's influence results grew and metastasized after he left the operation. Koch did great research, though, including interviewing Willi's widow, who was his accomplice.
The concept of cover organizations appearing totally separate from the Comintern, overt communism and communists was Muenzenberg's brain child. Not only did he conceive of the logistics and methodology, but he created the covert influence approach and the payload which his operations inserted into
The United Front network approach was completely Muenzenberg's concept, and he achieved the best coordinated network of fronts than anyone before or since. We still see his methods used in the network of NGOs, and "non-profits" in all of Muenzenberg's anti-Normal belief (racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, imperialism, anti-capitalism) targets. George Soros is probably the master of the Muenzenberg method today, and he just parrots Muenzenberg's payloads.
The Comintern was simply the Soviet Communist Party's fake "international communist political bureau." It was actually the driving force behind the KGB/Comintern efforts to spread the Russian communist revolution throughout the world (as communist/Marxist theory required to happen). They had an overt organization, but the covert organization was massive and extremely active. Not sure if there's any comparable organization today. The WEF, and Soros are probably as close as you get--but they lack the power, financial backing, and covert operational abilities of the Comintern. Even if they do, sort of, share some of the Comintern's aspirations of global changes.
‘Never been implemented’ . Ask the millions of dead in Cambodia, China , Russia, etal. I hope this guy comes back as a worm in Katyn Forest in his next non-life.
It's such an arrogant statement. They are basically saying they are smarter than anyone else that has tried and that THEY can implement it properly.
The architects of the Killing Fields of Cambodia were all educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. Khieu Samphan has a lomg doctoral thesis on the economic situation of Cambodia.
Meanwhile, these other folks probably got $200k in debt for some useless advanced degree
The prime directive of Marxist utopian elites (whether they accept the label or not) is absolute superiority complex to the level that justifies (to them) enslaving and killing others.
I hate to say it, but the only way to deal with these people is to eliminate them.
"Do you believe America has been a great force for good in the world? If so, where?"
Hard to believe that's a serious two questions.
I'll add one more to the responses here.
How about the millions of people that came to this country legally, fleeing famine, oppression, or to live a better life? (Rhetorical question. No need to respond.)
People who question the good America has done for the world are embarassing. However, they are useful to the globalists who begin the Big Takeover by first making enough people hate their country, their neighbors.
My father escaped from Hungary during the 1956 Revolution, fleeing the communist regime that Russia foisted on Hungary. He, along with many other Hungarians, were legitimately granted asylum because they were fleeing a dangerous revolution and regime. Most of my father's family stayed in Hungary and I spent time there before the Wall came down. Hungary had the least repressive government of any of countries behind the Iron Curtain, but communism still inflicted serious damage to the society. It is evil and will always be a destructive force.
Only, are they ever found in anything resembling an actual wild landscape? I doubt most could survive long. There are no Starbucks, and no cell phone chargers. Often no cell phone service, even!
Not only would it easily happen in the US the reaction to it would be far more severe and supported by more of the country than in Canada. There's no way it would have lasted two weeks if it was on the front lawn of the White House.
That’s ok.. apparently we just hire non English/reading truck drivers that never pass their drivers test. Probably don’t even have bank accounts but they make dandy u turns
A large portion of truck drivers in North America are from India and the Punjab. They seem to have cornered that industry here. Little road knowledge. But they get commercial licences anyway. Many accidents have ensued. Some quite bad. A hockey team of young men on a bus was wiped out in such an accident on the Canadian prairies a few years back.
Absolutely. If you think they wouldn't have used FinCen and the Patriot Act to seize and freeze all assets under "terrorist" assertions you are being naive. Or used civil asset forfeiture under the same rationale.
In any case, its irrelevant because we both know that a gathering of trucks, would have been moved on, violently if necessary, from in front of the Whit e House, or the Capitol building. And that it would have been supported by the majority of Americans.
What makes you think I’m being nieve? I was very aware how I was called a terrorist by Biden for voting for Trump and being a conservative and actively resisting renewables in our county. My husband and I remain unvaxxed.
Were the Canadian trucks in front of the Canadian parliament? I remember they had bouncy houses and it was like a street fest.
Sorry. I misread your first comment. You're not naive.
But yes, the semis were parked three deep in front of the House of Commons, and it's front door is maybe about 50' from the road. Many other important administrative buildings are only a sidewalk's width away.
The security services at the time were concerned there was no way to know if there weapons or explosives inside a trailer. A Timothy McVeigh style bombing could have been on the cards.
You're right. There were bouncy houses and street hockey and barbeques and kids and dogs. Most people there were discontented regular people swept along. *But* the protest was started and initially organized several far-right weirdos/weirdo groups, and it drew a lot of those individuals too.
Anyway, point being given the potential for large scale violence I think it's honestly surprising that the Canadian government let it last as long as it did. I don't think any other Western democracy would have done much differently.
I will state it too. And I am actually Canadian. I admire the U.S. The great experiment in human freedom. Needs a bit of work right now; but glory days will be ahead.
I have never been leftwing. I am very sad to see Canada fall this way. It may come to the point where Canada will either be taken by Communist China, or choose to join the U.S.
"[Marxism] has never once been implemented anywhere!"
The No True Marxist Fallacy captured in the wild! YES!
Today must be my lucky day, I'm going to buy some lottery tickets.
But first a few words from Bakunin, who struck a nerve and pushed Marx into a rage (which was his automatic response to any criticism). This is from "Statism and Anarchy" (1873):
—The words “learned socialist” and “scientific socialism,” which recur constantly in the writings and speeches of the Marxists, are proof in themselves that the pseudo-popular state will be nothing but the highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The people are not learned, so they will be liberated in entirety from the cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd. A fine liberation!
The Marxists sense this contradiction, and, recognizing that a government of scholars, the most oppressive, offensive, and contemptuous kind in the world, will be a real dictatorship for all its democratic forms, offer the consoling thought that this dictatorship will be temporary and brief.
They say that this state yoke, this dictatorship, is a necessary transitional device for achieving the total liberation of the people: anarchy, or freedom, is the goal, and the state, or dictatorship, the means. Thus, for the masses to be liberated they must first be enslaved."
A "highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars"—sounds like the last 5 years of the BLM/George Floyd era. Paging Pol Pot!
Ah, the timeless "real Communism has never been tried" argument. Evergreen.
It seems there is an entire generation, minds muddled with bullshit, that completely believes the "Socialism/communism has never *really* been tried before!" argument. Of course, they are referring to the elusive, magical *pure* socialism, not that perverted shit we saw in all those shithole countries that called themselves communist.
You’ll see if looking the Cold War vanished from the primary school curriculum in the 1990s.
Memory holed.
I don't know whether we can really blame that.
I grew up during the Cold War, in an atmosphere that was decidedly anti-communist, though I never learned much of anything about communism at school.
I was aware that people in communist countries were not allowed to just leave their countries, due to the occasional, spectacular stories of those "defecting" to the West. (And how often does anyone "defect" to the East?)
As a 20 year old, I realized how little I knew about communism, so I endeavored to remedy that, by first reading The Marxist Reader (with Das Capital, the Manifesto, and assorted essays by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin). Then I visited the library, and read everything I could find on the Russian Revolution, and Soviet history from the 1920's to the 1980's.
And THAT is why I am anti-communist.
If they remade Moscow on the Hudson today, Robin Williams' character would be the villain.
I grew up during the cold war too. I remember the fear that the Soviets might be able to do things better than us because of their command economy. Read the Alan Drury novels and you will get taste of what that fear was like. ADVISE AND CONSENT and the rest.
Average American World History 9th grade history curriculum
Nazism/Fascism- 1 month Hitler-palooza
USSR/Stalin-1 day “Yeah, he killed a few million folks, but remember, true Communism has never been tried”
Maoism-what the hell is that?!?!
Well so did I and was educated at home about communism.
Speaking of memory holes, not long ago I saw the first episode of a Netflix documentary series about World War II.
It depicted the German invasion of Poland from the West. I expected to see the corresponding Soviet invasion of Poland from the East, next, but it never came. Instead the show went directly to the German attack on the Soviet Union.
I never even knew about Stalin or Mao until I read about them by chance as an adult.
Public, private, or parochial school?
A half-decent public school in a poor town.
Wow -- that's really bad history! What happened to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?? Not to mention Hitler's invasion of France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, all of which occurred before he invaded the USSR. Nothing like pro-commie distortion of history!
My son's middle-school history curriculum in 2020 at Dwight-Englewood School was "America sucks." The reading was Zinn, Kendi, and several other authors who had a solely negative perspective on the US. It was taught by a guy who told us he was "challenging the narrative" of American history. He denied being "woke" at a parent-teacher conference, but I just took a look at his LinkedIn and his politics are quite clear.
Home school reasons part 10^6
We talked about that, but neither of us felt confident enough to be teachers. A good friend of mine was homeschooled and wound up a double major at Harvard, so I know there are success stories, but I also know some parents who should not be homeschooling their kids.
Co-ops are really popular now for that reason but I can assure you that it’s not very hard to be a better teacher than many teachers.
Kick that dude in the balls. Questioning and examining US History is one thing. Quite another to denounce out of some imaginary sanctimony.
Oh, I'd love to. The MF wouldn't put my son in the honors class, even though he was in multiple honors classes, and history was his favorite subject. Just flat-out wouldn't do it. I'm certain the reason was political.
On the bright side, his LinkedIn suggests he's having trouble keeping a job.
I hope that you were not paying $75,000 per year for your son's education that year.
He's paying about $60K per year for this BS. Only a private school could even get away with this because the curriculum is not regulated the way it is in public schools. I mean there is certainly BS in public schools as well but the textbook and official curriculum could not and are not as 'woke' as what is described here and to pay top dollar for that is insane. WTF.
Yeah, 54K. Pulled him out at the end of the 2021 school year, shortly after a teacher blew the whistle on what was happening behind the scenes (https://www.fairforall.org/profiles-in-courage/dwight-englewood-whistleblower/)
We were aware that there was a DEI department headed by a woman with a "doctorate" (her dissertation was 319 pages of nonsense) but we had assumed that the administration was smart and keeping her at bay. After the whistleblower we realized shit was rotten from the Head of School down and it was time to GTFO.
No that'd be Hotchkiss, where "working class" Graham Platner went!
I really just want to die now.
Probably so we could revive Russia Scare for impeachment and Ukraine War
Would anyone consider that Capitalism has ever *really* been tried, in the same pure perfect sense that they apply to Communism in this argument? I would say that it hasn't, but what would they say? I would also suggest that if Capitalism kind of works even in a flawed form, but Communism only works in a perfect, pure form, then that's a big argument against it, since even if it did work, it's clearly far too brittle a system to rely on. Apparently any imperfection renders it entirely unworkable.
"But ... but ... it's never actually really been tried! How can you know it's brittle if it actually hasn't been tried!"
This is what you'll get. There's no reasoning with religion, and that's what it is.
So true. Anyone who even suggests that argument has merit, meaning that communism was never really tried, is a brain-washed idiot. I've tried once or twice explaining to the "true believer" that communism really means a one-way street to an authoritarian dictatorship cloaked in hypocritical platitudes of a workers' paradise, which is really a paradise lost. The brain-washed masses, those drunk on the cool-aid, should be forced to experience it for themselves, some place far from here, say Cuba or North Korea. Just so they're playing out their destructive fantasies nowhere in my country and preferably nowhere near my continent (although that's probably too much to ask).
Perhaps it's not the "system" per se but the leaders who are supposed to implement them.
You mean, like HUMAN BEINGS?
I know, that's the part that fails.
Bingo. Collectivism presupposes the laws of human nature disappear with the correct political ideology. Who's the greedy one? The one who prefers to keep and disperse their own earnings? Or the those who use want to acquire it via government force to use "for the common good"?
History tells us those who determine the common good suffer from the same human fralities as the rest of us. Except worse
She's not a very good writer in that she wants to tell her readers EVERYTHING; but I have to say that Ayn Rand predicted today's current political state of affairs and human nature with surprising accuracy.
I read The Fountainhead first in the late 70's and then in the late 80's Atlas Shrugged. Like I said, they're long, looooong reads. But...
The dame nailed it.
If you haven't; give them a read (yeah, I know; nobody reads fiction no more). It's well worth the time, esp since Matt & Walter are on an Orwellian focus.
Rand's got a lot to say, and says it ALL; but is also absolutely correct.
"The system" requires everyone pool their money/resources and trust that a corrupt leader won't take over said "system".
Under what system would our leaders NOT be problematic? Did you not listen to the podcast today?
Right?! Power corrupts, unfortunately. I nominate a Benevolent Dictator AI.
And let's call it Skynet.
I think James Cameron has a copyright on that name, but yeah, sure!
It also, as Frank Herbert astutely noted, attracts the corruptible.
Frank Herbert was visionary. Dune is amazing. Too bad about the movie adaptations. They don't capture the small details that convey the deeper truths beyond the plot.
They’ll be the first up against the wall…
I've been confronting the faithful with this point for thirty years. The response has never been cogent.
Just tell them we could bring true utopia if only we would implement real capitalism; but alas, it's never been tried.
I like that, and it’s actually true.
Hong Kong got fairly close, for awhile....
That is Ayn Rand’s argument.
The best…..
Evergreen is right. If you’re over the age of 25 and trundling out this sad bromide, you may need to get out more.
Or accept the fact that you aren't as smart and talented as you think you are.
Gulag deniers.
They would be if they weren’t too damn busy with their struggle sessions….
I lived in a commune for a month once.
Communes are the only places true communism can work, where people are free to leave if they get tired of the arrangement. Any nation trying to impose communism on its citizens, will have to use massive repression, because people don't take kindly to having the "government" seize their possessions or their businesses, in order to divvy them up between those who demonstrate more "need."
Yep. Communism does not scale.
Israeli kibbutzim. First generation loved it; second generation, not so much.
did you ever read "Drop City" by TC Boyle?? :)
You mean, like a book?
tee hee. :) :)
Once.😂
Yep, evergreen and ever stupid. Even if we accept the premise, it means that "pure Comminism", whatever that's supposed to mean, is essentially impossible to implement, given the scope and scale of the attempts we've seen.
Oh, and the attempts have resulted in the death of tens of millions, not to mention poverty and national level catastrophe and the hollowing out of millions of souls.
Continuing the attempt is a damnable exercise, even if there is some non-zero chance of finally succeeding--which there isn't.
Are people really this crazy? They have been for quite some time.
It's odd. They're supposed to be pure materialists, yet they seem to believe in some kind of Platonic ideal of communism that will someday manifest from the world of forms.
Materialists aren’t materialists, as Nietzsche strongly implies.
(They’re still metaphysicians looking beyond the apparent world.)
LOLLLLL
Right into my pocket for quipping out later!
Real Fascism has never been tried either.
I've just pulled a number of Google-search definitions of fascism as they seem remarkably like ... governments that declare themselves Marxist:
For example:
-- "a governmental system led by a dictator [politburo] having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism ..."
-- "Philosophy of government that stresses the primacy and glory of the state, unquestioning obedience to its leader[s], subordination of the individual will to the state's authority, and harsh suppression of dissent."
-- "Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual."
About the only difference between it and Marxism is racial differentiation.
Read “Travellers in the 3rd Reich” a collection of letters from people who visited germany (and the Soviet Union) in that time frame.
Many could not see much difference between them
The most important thing for me is free speech, and neither the USSR nor the Nazis allowed that.
I got into a rather heated argument recently in a live chat with a lady who was absolutely incensed at my criticism of the Soviet Union. She asked me whether I knew of "the achievements of the USSR," & I told her I wasn't interested in their "achievements," because I cared more about liberty, and the fact that writers were being shipped off to slave labor camps for 25 years.
She came back with a hearty "Fuck You!" and has not returned to that chat for weeks.
China currently has lots of achievements as well, our former PM Trudeau famously praised china for its ability to turn its economy on a dime.
Of course it can do that because if anyone complains or bats an eye they are simply killed and bulldozed over, erased.
Now we have the technocrat Carney whose every instinct is that of the china politbureau
That lady is a brilliant debater!
Fascism is just communism with a different paint job.
Fascism is feudalism dressed up like socialism.
"On the one hand, the workers’ movement is increasingly developing towards a factual division into adherents and opponents of “defence of the fatherland”"
--Vladimir Lenin on the Socialists split between Nationalists (Fascists) and Internationalists. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/15.htm
The program is the same but the rhetoric has some opposites.
For example, in communism, the party embodies the will of the people and the state is a tool to enact that will, which is supposed to "wither away." Whereas in fascism, the state embodies the will of the people, and the party is a tool to bring about that state.
In communism, bourgeois society alienates man from his true socialist self, and recovers the ability to be a socialist when society is destroyed, whereas in fascism, man is alienated by being excluded or exiled from society and is saved by participation in the state.
In communism, merit is whatever benefits the powerful, and that's bad, so we won'thave merit, and in fascism merit is whatever benefits the powerful, ans that's good, so we will have "merit".
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite" -- John Kenneth Galbraith.
I never mentioned capitalism. Capitalism is the least “exploitative” way of operating a society that we have imagined.
Yes, Fascism split off from the Communist International in 1919 because of 'Socialist-Chauvinism' which we would call nationalism. Here is what Vladimir Lenin had to say:
"The opportunists (and deserters from the workers’ party such as Mussolini) practised social-chauvinism [Nationalism], lauding (as Plekhanov did) “gallant Belgium”, thereby shielding the policies, not of a gallant, but of a bourgeois Italy, which would plunder the Ukraine and Galicia"
--Vladimir Lenin, "On the Tasks Confronting the Workers’ Parties with Regard to Opportunism and Social-Chauvinism", https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jan/09.htm
Benito:
“Fascism is corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"
Dude would know….
The Commie argument. You are in a 4 story building. Commies convince you that you can fly. They tell you to go jump out the second story window and flap your arms. You fall and break your leg. Then they say you weren’t high enough go up to the roof jump off and flap your arms. You die. Then they say you didn’t flap your arms fast enough.
Sounds like you spent time behind the Iron Curtain! I recognize that humor -- because that is what passed for humor there.
Real Flyism has never been tried!
https://principlesvstribes.substack.com/p/beware-the-flyist
OK, sure, it didn't work that time, but wait until the next time.
Indeed. If only the evil capitalist would cooperate, it would work perfectly. Those bastards.
Gotta go. Uber Eats is at the door. Then after dinner I have to set up my new Iphone and after that I will blog on evil capitalist exploitation of the globes natural resources.
🛎️🔨
It is as predictable as night following day.
Communism = communes have existed in it's pure form. From AI: "Most American communes ended due to a mix of practical, social, and economic challenges. Key factors included internal conflicts and lack of effective leadership, difficulties sharing resources and responsibilities, disputes over land ownership, economic strain from lack of income or resources, and the effects of drug and alcohol abuse among some members". Now, multiply that by a nation population. See what you get. Oh wait! We have seen...
I read a book about a commune years ago, and most people wound up leaving due to the slackers in the group. Then I met a lady who had lived in a commune, and she told me that the biggest issue for those in her commune had been disputes between children, which grew into disputes between adults.
I still say that communes are the only places "true communism" can ever work, but expecting humans to act against their own best interests will always be a hurdle.
and lots of STDs.
Share and share alike! No need to covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his ass.
But what about thy neighbor's wife's ass? Changes the calculus.
The calculus, yes. The STDs no. hahahaha
There’s no such thing as a “Free” Love… er, Lunch.
It’s pretty classic that no one ever thinks to mention that “true capitalism” probably hasn’t ever been tried either, right? If all the cronies and corruption were weeded completely out, lots of systems are probably viable. But that will never, ever happen. And I much prefer crony capitalism to crony socialism. The cronies aren’t going away.
My theory is that meritocracy always degenerates into cronyism. It’s the natural result of our being social beings. Pure meritocracy would view people as commodities—items with X quantities of Y merit. Social beings resist such commodification. So, you end up picking the guy who, in some way, you are humanly comfortable with, the guy you can spend all day with in the next cubicle. Eventually this process becomes one of elite self-perpetuation.
I know it’s trite, but with the invention of affordable travel, I would simply leave if I thought the country I was living in was a great evil! What people say, tells you less than what they do.
See how easy that was? There are plenty of socialist countries around the globe - go there.
Amen.
“Men may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you you do.”
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Those in the USSR and East Germany were not allowed to leave. That was part of Communism. Still is, in North Korea.
The Chinese Commies allow movement outside the country only if they benefit from it. Such as their citizens abroad spying or stealing patents for them or otherwise infiltrating.
This is one of those unappreciated spirals in emerging socialism. When socialist solutions to problems fail as they inevitably do---for obvious reasons, we can't centrally plan even the most fundamental part of the economy, agriculture---socialist planners will look for an explanation. The first explanation will be capital flight, people leaving with their money, and in response, the socialist planners will institute capital controls to prevent people from taking money out of the system. When as inevitably happens, people abandon their money and start leaving just to escape the misery, the socialist planners institute exit controls on the theory that because the state educated and cared for you despite the desires of you or your family, the state's investment in you creates an ownership stake in you; you won't be allowed to leave because you supposedly owe everyone else. These developments follow one another like night follows day.
We've already seen hints of these tendencies in America. Currently, California greedily goes after whatever its bureaucrats and lawmakers think can be taxed after a resident leaves the state to establish residency elsewhere.
https://www.taxesforexpats.com/articles/expat-tax-rules/california-exit-tax.html
Despite the set of tax obligations being referred to as an exit tax, it's not a bona fide tax for just leaving the state, but the California legislature sometimes takes up the idea. Look for it to happen in the future, and look for New York to attempt the same.
The danger for America is that the socialists in America do not operate in a closed system: because their states' residents have the freedom to move to another state, the socialists don't have to accept failure and can fall back on one more excuse. They can shift blame to the country as a whole, claim that the reason for the failure is that the system isn't closed nationally and run everywhere on socialist principles, and sadly, there are a lot of people who will believe despite the fact that historical examples like the USSR followed the same path and failed miserably.
Interesting info. I search out the patterns too. Always tells me a great deal.
Britain under the current Labour govt. is attempting the same thing you describe.
Two other red flags I have observed -- note when the private home of a politician or businessman mysteriously sells for a large amount over asking, though there seemed to be little competition for it. It is a way for wealthy Communist infiltrators to buy influence. I have seen several cases of this, the most notable being the sale of the marital home of Prince Andrew years ago. And later, he was accused of involvement with a Chinese spy. But the lower-downs do it too.
Or when a person desperate for influence announces that someone higher on the totem pole is going to be the godparent of their child, which under normal circumstances is reserved for close family members practicing Christianity. These would-be godparents are not even personal friends or relations, but other political or business figures. The odd thing is that none of the parties had ever expressed an interest in Christianity prior to this, but then they are falling over themselves about their roles in a baptism. Former Canadian politician and WEF member Chrystia Freeland (from a Ukrainian Nazi family) named current PM and WEF-man Mark Carney as a godparent to her child years ago, then they ran against one another in the last election. Naming influential "godparents" is now a cynical political move by the power-hungry to announce a strategic alliance. More than ironic that the world's eugenicists are going around staging Christian baptisms as a tactic.
I think you might be interested in:
"Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party" by Garry Clement
Lots of general information about Communist Chinese infiltration tactics around the globe -- Canada and US too.
Thanks, I look forward to checking it out.
The US already has an exit tax - called an "expatriation tax": https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expatriation-tax
And that's on top of citizenship-based taxation, in which you are subject to filing federal income taxes wherever you live in the world (ignoring that you are paying taxes wherever you live). And the US strongarmed most governments around the world to collect and send along all your banking information to the IRS (through "intergovernmental agreements").
Thanks to the US government's strongarm tactics, US citizens are now barred from opening bank accounts in some countries because of the onerous reporting requirements and potential for draconian penalties if they mess it up.
I looked at the IRS link on the expatriation tax, and the threshold is shockingly low. I guess that the IRS is supposed to make a determination about the reason for your expatriation---the tax is only supposed to apply if you renounce your citizenship to escape your tax burden, so if I got the right idea from browsing the rules, the average nobody should in theory, be exempted---but the IRS's ability to be flexible in the matter doesn't change the fact that this is a turn on the downward spiral that I mentioned in the original post. So sad.
Even if the IRS doesn't ding you, should you want to renounce your citizenship you would still have to pay non-trivial fee (last I checked, $2350 USD) in order to renounce.
Yeah, I didn't know about the expatriation tax, but I did know about the other problems. I lived in Beijing for four years, and filing taxes even though I didn't owe anything was quite the pain in the neck. I spent roughly eight to twelve hours each year filling out stupid tax forms. My understanding was that the only other country to consider foreign earnings to be taxable income at the time was Eritrea.
I also knew about the banking situation, and fortunately for me, at the time that I lived in China, a lot of people including me were still paid in cash and dealt almost entirely in cash. (China didn't go to tap-to-pay systems with smart phones until after I left.)
And money laundering. You can tell when semirural Chinese restaurants serve Costco spring rolls and frozen reheats.
Money-laundering is one of their most popular hobbies. In Canada, CCP infiltrators money-laundered our whole real estate industry to exorbitant asking prices, so that normal people can seldom afford to buy a home now.
lol
I went to Venice in 1991. The parking lots in the land areas around Venice were packed with buses full of people who after the fall of the Berlin Wall were finally able to see parts of the world forbidden to them. It was obvious they were living and sleeping in the buses while they were there. Cooking outside around them as well.
I love responding to my Lib friends, who are forever threatening about "Moving to Canada/Portugal/wherever" that they should really follow through and do it. I usually get a look of surprise, because most of them aren't really serious about doing it, they just think they're scoring points with their Blue MAGA bubble komrades.
Add the “No Kings” protestors moving to the UK! Ummmm…should we tell them?
Add Canada to that list, too.
No, don’t. Please let them…
They can’t just permanently move to Canada and work there. Why are Americans like yourself so ignorant of how immigration works?
1) I never said anything about "working there."
2) I've spent significant chunks of my life living, and working, in Canada, and am married to a Canadian. I'm fairly familiar with both the immigration and labor laws for foreigners.
3) Reading comprehension is obviously a big challenge for you. Are you a product of the Canadian education system?
Hey, steady on there. I am a product of the Canadian education system. Some years ago. Used to be superb.
Not anymore.
So your idea is they’re all independently wealthy and don’t need to work in order to live? Thanks for agreeing that they can’t just permanently move to Canada.
"My idea?" I'm simply repeating the talking points of some people that I know, and am stating no opinions about living or working in Canada whatsoever.. This must be really hard for you to keep up with.
I’m responding to what you said. Go back and re-read what you wrote. Sorry that you’re having issues with your reading comprehension skills
We are ignorant of your immigration laws mainly because we don’t give a shit . Why would we? Most of the population lives within 30 miles of our border for a reason.
So don’t comment on things you’re ignorant about, if you don’t want your ignorance to be pointed out to you. And are you trying to suggest that Canadians mostly live in the south to be closer to Americans? They live in the south because it’s warmer than the north
"And are you trying to suggest that Canadians mostly live in the south to be closer to Americans?"
I am implying this. Most wont admit it, but deep down every single Canadian wishes they were American.
You all love us and want to be as close as possible.
Obviously, most of us Australians live in the southern half of the continent to be closer to Antarctica.
Perhaps you like being a nasty person?
You live close to the border because that’s where the jobs are. I’ll comment on any damn thing I choose. You fucking Canucks would still be marrying polar bears were it not for the us . don’t act so holy.
My friend sold her home, car etc.. she was going to move to Sicily .. great grandparents from there. No problem right? Wrong. When asked if she had a job, she’s retired, they denied her dual citizenship. She’s crying on FB now. She can’t even fathom living here 3 more years with Trump. Now here’s a true example of TDS, just jump ship don’t do any homework. Those other countries might not want you!
Most countries you might want to live in have stricter rules than we do. If you don't qualify for Italian citizenship by ancestry (the law was recently changed to make that more difficult), you need to demonstrate that you bring with you a secure livable income and gain an intermediate working fluency with Italian. The food is great but most of the time the Italian bureaucracy will drive a sane American around the bend.
The grass is always greener......
Sometimes I think it might be like suicide, resentment towards what you are leaving rather than any notion of what's coming!
Indeed
Why would you conclude he was ignorant about immigration law? He was simply telling people to go do what they were threatening to do. Canada was just one of three places.
Your response suggests you are simply trying to incite reaction, not thought. Perhaps the ignorance in question is your own lack of self awareness?
We’re not. We just enjoy watching them bloviate about moving to Canada, only to meet Canada’s immigration roadblocks, and be rejected.
You can if you have brown skin. I thought this was common knowledge?
No, you can’t 🙄
I once got yelled at by a friend who told me my agreeing with controlled borders was equivalent to North Korea and East Germany. Is that the definition of a straw man argument? Those regimes’ goals are to KEEP PEOPLE IN, not out. What an odd way of thinking.
Ghana, for one. My former SIL literally flew out today to move to Ghana. Former British colony. People speak English. I saw a photo of her newly built house. It's lovely! 200K. So, find the US intolerable? Move to Ghana!
Let's see how long she lasts in Ghana. Black or white, she won't last long. My favorite picture of my several month stint working in Ghana is the sign (common in upper class residential neighborhoods): No Defecating Here
"A black American woman who allegedly moved to Ghana to flee what she described as “white racism” in the U.S. is now begging to come back. The issue? Africa isn’t the safe haven she quite imagined.
The unnamed woman went viral Tuesday after several conservative pages shared a video of her unleashing a verbal tirade about her experiences in Ghana. Headline USA could not independently verify the authenticity of the date of the video.
“I’d rather go back to America and deal with the racism in America before I sit here in Africa and deal with the bullsh*t robbery, the bullsh*t fraud, the bullsh*t scams, the bullsh*t too expensive, the bullsh*t not having no snacks, the bullsh*t not having no food, the bullsh*t electricity, the bullsh*t hot water,” she claimed.
The woman also complained about her house being invaded by “bullsh*t animals,” such as scorpions and “big *ss spiders, big *ss lizards, colorful lizards you ain’t never seen before—all in the room with you, sleeping with you.”
According to her, locals constantly attempt to get money from her because they believe she is wealthy."
https://headlineusa.com/black-american-who-fled-to-ghana-over-racism-now-wants-to-return/
Chuckling at "white racism."
I have no idea what these people are talking about.
I am white, and I never hear any racist talk from white people -- but I do hear quite a bit of anti-white racism from those with melanin.
But the Communists may not let you out, Joe. They used to shoot would-be escapees from Communist East Germany. Until 1989. That’s what all the barbed wire fences and armed guards were about. Nothing to do with affordable travel. Had to do with the people there not wanting to be killed.
You can’t just move to other countries. Ask Matt — he tried to move to Canada but couldn’t get through the immigration system
People move to other countries, already having, or obtaining, work visas all the time. You are absolutely clueless.
Work Permits (Italy)
American citizens who have a job offer in Italy, or wish to work in Italy, either temporarily or permanently, must be provided with a work permit obtained by the prospective employer, and must obtain a work visa from the Italian Consular authorities BEFORE coming to Italy. A written job offer or an employment contract is not regarded as a valid document for working in Italy: the prospective employer is required to apply for preliminary clearance from the provincial employment office (Ufficio Provinciale del Lavoro e della Massima Occupazione) in the proposed city of employment by submitting evidence that persons qualified for the position offered to a non-resident foreigner are not available in the local labor market. If clearance is granted, the prospective employer is further required to obtain a work permit with the approval of the regional and central authorities. The permit is then sent to the worker so that he or she may apply for the entry visa. There are Italian consular offices in most major cities in the U.S. The procedure for professional and self-employment is basically the same as that described above. A permit to reside in Italy for the purpose of employment is obtained after arrival in the country from the central police office (Questura) having jurisdiction. To apply for permit, you must submit a valid Italian visa and work permit.
It’s not that easy. Ask Matt — he tried to move to Canada but was denied. He’s talked about it on the show
Why/when did he want to move to Canada? Link me to the show if you can.
Nope, not true. Read my previous reply about my friend trying to move to Italy.
Yeah! Actions speak louder than birds? Or something like that. 😂
And become a victim of America's foreign policy? I think not!
Yeah, the world was such a better place before America's foreign policy. Read a book.
Perhaps learn what a joke is before telling others to get educated
A comment so absurd it inspired an entire new post. My hat is off.
I'm sure that's all he was aiming for. And Matt took the bait. And we got the greatest paragraph with the most commas in the history of prose. Everybody wins.
... and he didn't even mention billions upon billions upon billions of charitable & other $$ to other nations!
And the theatrical musical, as well as the possibly as many as 1,000 brilliant popular songs which comprise what is commonly referred to as The Great American Songbook. ( Yes, I know about European operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan, and "revue," but the musical itself, whether musical drama or musical comedy, gelled here. )
In all fairness, that wasn't real money. We just kinda printed it up and pretended it was real.
I wonder if that will ever come back and bite our grandkids in the ass?
And the $20 Trillion "War On Poverty."
Is it too much to ask for Mr. Edward’s to come back on here and defend his comment?? I mean, if we promise to be “nice”??
Nah...let's go knock on his door!
I like how you think…
Go ahead and be nice. I don't agree to that.
Oh I used quotes for a reason 😉
Damn, I missed that. Well played, sir.
I’m a woman in my late 60’s and I will totally take that as a compliment! 😊
You go, girl!
Not even fucking close.
Hyperbole?
Absolutely.
One wonders what claims Edwards would make for his (apparently) preferred governance system. Can't think of anything notable besides death, tyranny and the destruction of the human spirit produced by Communism and Socialism.
Are you the legislator who penned us up a bill that banned the use of certain things? Like this and that?
Don't have any idea what you are talking about.
And this and that. And this and that.
I gathered here today in this hall of old to honor this man…and told a joke or three…
I was born behind the iron curtain and now live in Canada. What America and the West in general allowed to fester within the walls of its schools and colleges boggles my goddamned mind.
so u think it was a mistake to turn all our educational institutions over to dimwitted zealots drunk on jargon who hate us, our country, culture, history (and hate themselves most of all) and who want to "radically deconstruct" aka destroy it?!
NAAHHHH /s
It's called the Critical Theory of History, and was introduced by people like Zinn and Cloward in the 50's 60's. The idea was to analzed, evaluate a society by everything they did that was wrong. That's how we got to today; a lopsided chart.
I'm more of a Marcuse guy when it comes to malevolent Marxists who tried to install a program of "socialist liberation", meaning they would get to be omnipotent philosopher-kings dictating what we'd be allowed to say, write, think, etc.
Also Marcuse has to be History's least grateful refugee, we saved him from Hitler's gas chambers and he paid us back with constant denunciations.
Have you read Matt's takedown of Marcuse? Was brilliant.
The beauty of free speech is not that it lets us wallow in self-praise but just the opposite. No nation is perfect but the ones that allow criticism and dissent are far and away the best. All of you seem to want to quash that freedom. I see it as the very thing that makes people want to be better simply because they know they CAN be better. To me that is freedom.
I’ve not… link please?
https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/revolution1313/bernard-e-harcourt-angela-davis-on-marcuse-adorno-and-the-german-sds-student-movement/
there's a lot of this "revolutionary" vomit online. Marcuse was hoping Angela would do some killing so he could feel young and alive but not risk being arrested or deported.
Power to the People! lol
Opps - I was asking for a link to “.., Matt's takedown of Marcuse? ” seems you shared something else. Nice to chat with you again, BTW
I agree that it was Herbert Marcuse and his ilk from the Frankfurt School, transplanted to the US in the 50s, and given faculty positions, which spread the Marxist poison on this continent.
Angela Davis was a prominent and fawned-over grad student of Marcuse. You can easily see where her indoctrination came from.
I wish there were more articles like that.
You're about 30 years too late. The operation to destroy Normal American culture began in the 1920's. The Comintern genius of covert influence, Willi Muenzenberg conceived of the operation, sent out his operators to penetrate American cultural transmission (Hollywood, education/academia, the media), and created the "America sucks" belief system that they inserted into our culture.
"Covert Influence Payload
Babette Gross, wife of KGB agent Willi Muenzenberg, explained the content of the Soviet payload to Stephen Koch:
You claim to be an independent-minded idealist.
You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break.
You believe in open-mindedness.
You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country.
You’re frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the workingman.
You think the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works.
You believe in peace.
You yearn for international understanding.
You hate fascism.
You think the capitalist system is corrupt.
This payload exactly matches today’s PC-Progressive message. The message that Soviet covert operators propagated through American Willing Accomplices. The Willing Accomplices, wittingly or unwittingly, spread the anti-American message. And this message bloomed and grew into the pernicious set of taboos and strictures that we call PC today."
Details:
https://kentclizbe.substack.com/p/origins-of-todays-normal-hating-lying?utm_source=publication-search
This reminds me of hearing Kruschev say, "We will bury you without firing a shot". Seeing the pervasive cultural rot and political chaos in which we now live, I understand what he meant. It was his very open threat of destroying us from within. The question now is, How much longer will the Fifth Column exist? Where are the forces that will confront it? Trump has begun the gutting, but has a short time in which to complete the excision.
It is much more damaging to a culture to penetrate minds of a whole nation with brainwashing, than the bodies of thousands of soldiers with bullets (although those soldiers may argue the point).
Americans do not yet understand, by and large, that masses of them have been collectively brainwashed by totalitarian forces. This isn't the way that Hollywood told them brainwashing was supposed to look.
By Khruschev's time the KGB/Comintern operations were pretty much over--and they'd purged and killed all the operators, including Muenzenberg.
The power of covert influence, though, is that the messages implanted in the 20s-40s in American culture were self-seeding--the spread internally, like cancer, or a virus.
They only came to full fruition with Obama and the Democrat party of that time. By then, to be a Democrat, one had to fully subscribe to PC-Progressive belief system (straight from Muenzenberg):
America is a:
racist
sexist
xenophobic
homophobic
imperialist
capitalist
...hellhole, and it must be changed.
They certainly 'analzed' it. Emphasis on the anal.
Why don't you move back where you came from then? Do any of you people realize how ridiculous this conversation is?
They had a little help. Totalitarianism crept in from post-war Europe. And Americans fell for the scam of self-denigration, starting in the 60s. They were carefully groomed to hate themselves. BIG mistake!
The self denigration began earlier, blossomed in the 20's and 30's with the rise of the labor movement which was heavily infested with Communists. In spite of the fact that Communism lost its lustre as Stalin's atrocities were revealed and with the failure of Communism in Eastern Europe following WWII, the Hate America retained its allure in our main cultural structures, academia, media and the Democratic Party. Hating America morphed from being a serious political movement to a sophistication signal, and currently to a virtue signal as intense as any religion. As a result, it is resistant to confrontation by facts. It's like having lead infested soil surrounding your house: you can't just cover it over; you have to dig it out entirely and replace it with healthy soil. Fly your flag; it will help.
Gortroe, you are preaching to the converted. I understand this material at least as well as you do.
Yes, America was infiltrated with Communists by the 20s and 30s, but they did not have the magic of mass communication to spread this too far beyond their own circles. And they framed their Communism in such a way that the majority of Americans still shied away from it.
It was by the 60s, with the Baby Boom generation coming of age, that the totalitarians saw real possibilities. Their secret weapon was to catch the Baby Boomer minds through their own vanities -- meaning, the need to appear cool and progressive. And so they did. With a lot of help from mass communications and the entertainment industry. Hooked them on addictive drugs which were newly flooding the country too. All fun, fun, fun! Who could argue? Taught them to hate America, hate Western civilization, and destroy everything that had any meaning. The Boomer youth were easy marks.
"Yes, America was infiltrated with Communists by the 20s and 30s, but they did not have the magic of mass communication to spread this too far beyond their own circles."
The beauty of the covert influence operations that destroyed Normal American culture was that "Communists" were not needed.
The Comintern influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg, created "Hate Normals and Feel Good" front organizations, that had no obvious connection with Communism.
His first operation was the protests (America is a foreigner-hating hell-hole!) against the Sacco & Vanzetti arrests and trial. Closely followed by the Scottsboro Boys (America is a racist hell-hole!) operation.
He then targeted the media, academia/education (Dr George S. Counts), and Hollywood. His agents formed front organizations that inserted the Hate-America payload into our culture.
He was only wrong in his belief that his work would bear fruit in a few years. It ended up taking 60 or so years. The Hate-America payload grew and grew, infiltrating the three transmission centers of our culture, emerging in full force in the 1980s as Politically Correct Progressivism--the belief system that America is wrong and bad, and must be "changed" (read "destroyed"). PC-Prog became the only acceptable beliefs in the Democrat party, until it was required by the time of Obama.
Full details: www.willingaccomplices.com
Kent, you might be interested in this book, written by a former RCMP Director; I think you would recognize many of the tactics described:
"Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party" by Garry Clement
The Chinese Communists have one particular favoured tactic of infiltrating -- through Buddhist monasteries and related organizations. The popularizing of Buddhism amongst the North American middle-class for decades may have been something of a set-up. So that all Buddhist organizations would be trusted and familiar and attractive to North Americans. As in Gotcha!
Interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.
The Chinese have been quite active with influence operations in the USA, and probably Canada, too, since then. Their more overt influence operations (Confucious Centers) have been called out, though:
https://china.usc.edu/confucius-institutes-united-states
The inheritors of Muenzenberg's influence (covert and overt) operational template against the USA are the Mossad and Israel. The organizations that pump Israeli influence payloads into our culture are massively funded. The recent $7000 per post payments to American influencers is more overt, but their covert influence operations have touched virtually every "conservative" commentator for the last couple decades.
I knew of Willi Münzenberg as a Communist activist and propagandist who eventually left, travelled Europe and called himself a socialist. He was a con-man too. Very intelligent, but without conscience. Possibly a Psychopath. Died in 1940.
He was aware of, and used to his satisfaction, the tactic of bamboozling the vulnerable innocents (he would have done well plying his trade in Canada).
He created front organizations -- much as the Communist Chinese do now through their United Front network -- in which he claimed to be carrying out benign good works, while actually funding further tools of Communism. This is a standard totalitarian ploy. We see it amongst the Western leftists today; they virtue-signal with groups of compassionate-sounding names, while under the surface these groups advance social destruction.
Comintern was an earlier version of the concept of destructive Globalism. Although they did not advertise it as destructive, but quite the opposite.
Muenzenberg was a Comintern covert influence operations genius. Your description of him is about 25% of the whole/real story. Most sources on him do not fully grasp his power and operational genius. A really horrible book on him is "The Red Millionaire" by a professor who totally misunderstands espionage operations. Beside my own book, Willing Accomplices, linked above, is Stephen Koch's "Double Lives." Koch grasped Muenzenberg's importance during his lifetime, but fails to realize that Willi's influence results grew and metastasized after he left the operation. Koch did great research, though, including interviewing Willi's widow, who was his accomplice.
The concept of cover organizations appearing totally separate from the Comintern, overt communism and communists was Muenzenberg's brain child. Not only did he conceive of the logistics and methodology, but he created the covert influence approach and the payload which his operations inserted into
The United Front network approach was completely Muenzenberg's concept, and he achieved the best coordinated network of fronts than anyone before or since. We still see his methods used in the network of NGOs, and "non-profits" in all of Muenzenberg's anti-Normal belief (racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, imperialism, anti-capitalism) targets. George Soros is probably the master of the Muenzenberg method today, and he just parrots Muenzenberg's payloads.
The Comintern was simply the Soviet Communist Party's fake "international communist political bureau." It was actually the driving force behind the KGB/Comintern efforts to spread the Russian communist revolution throughout the world (as communist/Marxist theory required to happen). They had an overt organization, but the covert organization was massive and extremely active. Not sure if there's any comparable organization today. The WEF, and Soros are probably as close as you get--but they lack the power, financial backing, and covert operational abilities of the Comintern. Even if they do, sort of, share some of the Comintern's aspirations of global changes.
"never mind that it has never once been implemented anywhere"
LOL
‘Never been implemented’ . Ask the millions of dead in Cambodia, China , Russia, etal. I hope this guy comes back as a worm in Katyn Forest in his next non-life.
See the movie, "TheRed Girl" for a look at what communism meant in China. It will break your heart.
Also read, Mao the Unknown Story. It was so gruesome I couldn't finish it.
Watch the nine commentaries on the CCP
Tenth time is the charm.
Rather more than that number, I would think . . .
If only the Soviets had Mamdani and AOC - they would be thriving to this day in a Socialist paradise...
It's such an arrogant statement. They are basically saying they are smarter than anyone else that has tried and that THEY can implement it properly.
The architects of the Killing Fields of Cambodia were all educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. Khieu Samphan has a lomg doctoral thesis on the economic situation of Cambodia.
Meanwhile, these other folks probably got $200k in debt for some useless advanced degree
The prime directive of Marxist utopian elites (whether they accept the label or not) is absolute superiority complex to the level that justifies (to them) enslaving and killing others.
I hate to say it, but the only way to deal with these people is to eliminate them.
This is why you can't get them to comprehend that:
https://principlesvstribes.substack.com/p/beware-the-flyist
Flyism: My new mantra.
Are you even capable of understanding a hack mentality like his? I'm not.
On the cutting edge of political thought, 1912.
"Do you believe America has been a great force for good in the world? If so, where?"
Hard to believe that's a serious two questions.
I'll add one more to the responses here.
How about the millions of people that came to this country legally, fleeing famine, oppression, or to live a better life? (Rhetorical question. No need to respond.)
My parents came to the United States in the 1930s fleeing Nazi Germany and indeed lived a better life.
People who question the good America has done for the world are embarassing. However, they are useful to the globalists who begin the Big Takeover by first making enough people hate their country, their neighbors.
My father escaped from Hungary during the 1956 Revolution, fleeing the communist regime that Russia foisted on Hungary. He, along with many other Hungarians, were legitimately granted asylum because they were fleeing a dangerous revolution and regime. Most of my father's family stayed in Hungary and I spent time there before the Wall came down. Hungary had the least repressive government of any of countries behind the Iron Curtain, but communism still inflicted serious damage to the society. It is evil and will always be a destructive force.
As did my grandparents, father's side!
"never mind that it has never once been implemented anywhere"
No one who ever spouts this monumentally idiotic talking point ever wants to address my followup question, "why not given how many places have tried?"
People who say that are delusional, I've heard it before but they can never make an argument to back it up.
Yes. Yes they are.
People are indeed crazy.
Beat me to my post by 5 minutes.
I actually have met people like this.
I will count myself lucky to have only read their rantings and never actually had to meet one in the wild.
"in the wild".
Brilliant!
Only, are they ever found in anything resembling an actual wild landscape? I doubt most could survive long. There are no Starbucks, and no cell phone chargers. Often no cell phone service, even!
I understand the criticisms of the US. I don't get hating it. Those who hate it the most tend to be the same who refuse to leave it.
Spot on , Matt.
I’m not really sure that they are crazy, but they sure are as nihilistic and egotistical as Marx was.
I am always amused by the, “It’s never been tried.” argument.
Oh really? Would those people accept an argument that Nazi German and Fascist Italy weren’t the REAL fascism?
I think not.
Thank you for stating the good in our country.
It’s very concerning. What Trudeau did the truckers was a gut punch because of how easily it could happen here. I hope things swing back there.
Some of Trump's former cabinet members were also debanked, as I recall.
Oh my.
Not only would it easily happen in the US the reaction to it would be far more severe and supported by more of the country than in Canada. There's no way it would have lasted two weeks if it was on the front lawn of the White House.
Do you mean debanking the truckers would be more severe?
That’s ok.. apparently we just hire non English/reading truck drivers that never pass their drivers test. Probably don’t even have bank accounts but they make dandy u turns
A large portion of truck drivers in North America are from India and the Punjab. They seem to have cornered that industry here. Little road knowledge. But they get commercial licences anyway. Many accidents have ensued. Some quite bad. A hockey team of young men on a bus was wiped out in such an accident on the Canadian prairies a few years back.
Yes. Some of our state DMVs are nuts.
Absolutely. If you think they wouldn't have used FinCen and the Patriot Act to seize and freeze all assets under "terrorist" assertions you are being naive. Or used civil asset forfeiture under the same rationale.
In any case, its irrelevant because we both know that a gathering of trucks, would have been moved on, violently if necessary, from in front of the Whit e House, or the Capitol building. And that it would have been supported by the majority of Americans.
What makes you think I’m being nieve? I was very aware how I was called a terrorist by Biden for voting for Trump and being a conservative and actively resisting renewables in our county. My husband and I remain unvaxxed.
Were the Canadian trucks in front of the Canadian parliament? I remember they had bouncy houses and it was like a street fest.
Sorry. I misread your first comment. You're not naive.
But yes, the semis were parked three deep in front of the House of Commons, and it's front door is maybe about 50' from the road. Many other important administrative buildings are only a sidewalk's width away.
The security services at the time were concerned there was no way to know if there weapons or explosives inside a trailer. A Timothy McVeigh style bombing could have been on the cards.
You're right. There were bouncy houses and street hockey and barbeques and kids and dogs. Most people there were discontented regular people swept along. *But* the protest was started and initially organized several far-right weirdos/weirdo groups, and it drew a lot of those individuals too.
Anyway, point being given the potential for large scale violence I think it's honestly surprising that the Canadian government let it last as long as it did. I don't think any other Western democracy would have done much differently.
I will state it too. And I am actually Canadian. I admire the U.S. The great experiment in human freedom. Needs a bit of work right now; but glory days will be ahead.
I hope so! What do you think of what’s going on in Canada these days?
I have never been leftwing. I am very sad to see Canada fall this way. It may come to the point where Canada will either be taken by Communist China, or choose to join the U.S.
It’s not good
Dead on, my friend! Also from Life of Brian is the highly-apropos-to-our-leftist-friends scene “Why are you always going in about women, Stan?”
“I want to be one”…
“Where’s it going to gestate?”
You gonna keep it in a box?
Why yes, Matt. Yes they are.
It appears they are. Crazy is a kind characterization, however. Stupid, idiotic and just plain dumb, seem more appropriate.
"[Marxism] has never once been implemented anywhere!"
The No True Marxist Fallacy captured in the wild! YES!
Today must be my lucky day, I'm going to buy some lottery tickets.
But first a few words from Bakunin, who struck a nerve and pushed Marx into a rage (which was his automatic response to any criticism). This is from "Statism and Anarchy" (1873):
—The words “learned socialist” and “scientific socialism,” which recur constantly in the writings and speeches of the Marxists, are proof in themselves that the pseudo-popular state will be nothing but the highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The people are not learned, so they will be liberated in entirety from the cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd. A fine liberation!
The Marxists sense this contradiction, and, recognizing that a government of scholars, the most oppressive, offensive, and contemptuous kind in the world, will be a real dictatorship for all its democratic forms, offer the consoling thought that this dictatorship will be temporary and brief.
They say that this state yoke, this dictatorship, is a necessary transitional device for achieving the total liberation of the people: anarchy, or freedom, is the goal, and the state, or dictatorship, the means. Thus, for the masses to be liberated they must first be enslaved."
A "highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars"—sounds like the last 5 years of the BLM/George Floyd era. Paging Pol Pot!
Don’t forget Covid lockdowns
I'd be happy to take you to Portland and introduce you to rooms full of them.
We need places like Portland to act as attractors. It's when they escape it's a problem.
I escaped. They're perfectly happy to stay.
See? We can all get along. Just in different places. The magic of America :)
So far