Domestically, communists and socialists endured harassment, financial ruin, and prison. Witness the Palmer Raids and the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. Thank God our opulent overlords nipped potential revolutionary action in the bud. It is a tremendous relief that such a small number of “richly deserving” individuals acted to ensure the perpetuation of their virtual monopoly on the wealth of our nation, particularly in light of the existence of over a million homeless US Americans. Heartwarming indeed.
Yet our intrepid profit-seekers weren’t content to stop there. Realizing that the Soviet Union had an economy that was roughly 1/8th the size of the United States and was still largely agrarian all the way up to the Russian Revolution, they decided to initiate a ruinous military escalation that eventually culminated in the criminal nuclear arms race. Enabling obscene profits for the military industrial complex (by way of raping the US American taxpayer) and smothering communism in its infancy, the vampiric bourgeoisie ensured the perpetuation of its abominable existence. Meanwhile, the Ruskies faced the staggering tasks of industrializing a technologically backward nation, rebuilding their devastated infrastructure, and meeting consumer demands. So of course they didn’t have a McDonalds on each corner or a new car dealer within a three mile radius of every home. They were too busy bringing their economy into the 20th Century, recovering from Hitler’s invasion, and matching the US warhead for warhead.
Now, do I think that any manifestation of a communist government to date is a utopia? No. I see their flaws. But remember, those who have tried to implement socialism or communism have faced a formidable adversary in the form of the rotten bastards who comprise both our “elected” and our de facto governments. Crushing those who dare to attempt alternatives to the sacred cow of capitalism and trumpeting our “monopoly” on virtue, we US Americans would benefit tremendously from some serious soul-searching about our participation in a morally bankrupt mode of being. What spiritual growth or substance could possibly flourish in a system premised on greed, selfishness, and self-absorption?
Are we, the beneficiaries of a relative degree of physical security and comfort (in exchange for our complicity in crony capitalism, Neoliberal exploitation, and imperial invasions), truly superior to the communists and socialists we have been taught to fear and revile? How many invasions have Fidel or Chavez EVER launched?
We the People are mere pawns of our multimillionaires in Congress, the 10% who own 90% of our nation’s wealth, massive corporations, and a group which includes in its ranks both GW and other abject criminals like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Abrams, Negroponte, and many others who have acted with impunity dating back to the Nixon era. There is a revolving door between our government (including both “elected” and appointed officials) and major corporations. Cheney and Halliburton represent exhibit A. Lobbyists and special interest groups pull our legislators’ strings and, in some instances, even write our laws, as was the case in the behind-closed-doors deal that Cheney cooked for the energy corporations. And look at our most likely Democratic Presidential nominee to be, Hillary Clinton, whose conservatism is one of the best kept secrets inside the Beltway. As a First Lady, she ostensibly fought aggressively for universal health care. She has now sold us out by accepting nearly a million dollars from the health care industry. Corruption, duplicity, mendacity, and egregious criminal conduct are not the exception. They are the rule in our vaunted capitalist system.
Our domestic politics, guided and determined by the demands of our predatory socioeconomic structure, are not alone in reeking of the fetid stench of profound moral decay. Consider our malevolent foreign policy, including myriad CIA covert operations, economic extortion, and outright imperial slaughter frequently employed to crush efforts by sovereign nations to defy the capitalist paradigm and implement socialism. For convincing evidence that we are NOT wearing white hats and making the world safe for democracy, do a little research on Chile and Salvador Allende, Cuba and Castro, Iran and Mossadeq, Franco and Spain, Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam (we “only” killed 3 million people there), Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
Here is a good starting point (the entire website is excellent, but the page linked below gives a condensed version of parts of our history the plutocracy doesn’t want the masses to know– the mainstream media and textbook writers have done a masterful job of shielding us from the truths displayed on this site):
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html
While it wasn’t his intention at the time, David Starr Jordan (from Imperial Democracy, 1899, pp. 50-51 –cited in Monthly Review, September 2006, p. 53.) penned an apt characterization of the despicable foreign policy of the American Empire:
“First you push into territories where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment and, in these wild countries, resentment means resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and that their act is rebellion (this in spite of your own assurance that you have no intention of setting up a permanent sovereignty over them); fourthly, you send a force to stamp out the rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, confusion and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this territory would be left in a condition which no civilized power could contemplate with equanimity or with composure. These are the five stages in the Forward Rake’s progress.”
Having analyzed our vile and reprehensible economic paradigm from many angles, I find it virtually impossible to believe that a critical thinking, decent human being could support our institutionalized rapacity, at least not once they pierced the simulacrum so fastidiously maintained by the corporate media.
Fortunately, challenging life experiences spurred me to undertake a spiritual and intellectual journey that enabled me to break free of the prison of false consciousness. While I tend to look at the world through a very eclectic lens, I derive most of my principles, beliefs, and sociopolitical views from Marxism, the Friends of Bill W, Christ’s teachings, and Buddha.
Together with many dedicated and exceptional human beings, I am waging an intellectual/political struggle for social justice, a reasonable degree of peace in the world, a significant reduction in exploitation, a more equitable distribution of resources, an end to the rising epidemic of unnecessary suffering, the formation of a social structure based on our interdependence with nature and each other, the obliteration of the moronic, sociopathic American myth that individuality and personal rights supersede the well-being of the collective, true justice for criminals and their victims, the evisceration of corporate power, awakening people from their trance of self-absorption and apathy, and an end to the hedonistic narcissism manifested in obscene levels of consumerism. A number of factors indicate that we are in a pre-revolutionary stage in the United States. Premature revolutionary activity at this point would be suicidal folly, but meanwhile, we have plenty of opportunity to implement radical solutions at the personal level and to employ political education to win hearts and minds.
If you still tremble at the notion of “Godless communists, socialists or Marxists,” remember that though I am not a Christian, I am deeply spiritual and derive tremendous inspiration from Christ and members of the Liberation Theology Movement. Marxist thought is not antithetical to spirituality, morality, or Christianity. In fact, I examined its synthesis with these elements in some detail when I wrote “Jesus Wouldn’t Bomb Anyone: Why are we waging war on the poor and oppressed?” at:
http://freepress.org/departments/display/9/2007/2526
No, I’m not the “communist bogeyman” that Ronald Reagan (who was a far better actor in the White House than he was in Hollywood) warned you about. How could I be? Communists, socialists, and Marxists are only potentially threatening to those amongst us who will waste eternity desperately attempting to squeeze camels through the eyes of needles.
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