So Where Were You When the Commies Won?

By TRB

Believe it or not, I was in a toy store, being a good capitalist, purchasing every damn toy I could see for my grandchildren. It was the week before Christmas, sometime just a few years back. Like most Americans I had been brainwashed a long time ago into believing that the U.S. was the "winner" of the "Cold War," a war in which I actually participated.

I had seen that TV clip over and over. The clip of our washed up actor, part time fake president, Ronald Reagan, the "Great Communicator of many untruths, as he stood in the square of what was then West Berlin and yelled something ridiculous like "Tear this wall down." The wall had been erected shortly after WWII when the Russian police-state government worried that East Berlin would empty into West Berlin if they didn't stop the flow of hundreds of East Berliners on a daily basis.

The Wall went up. The U.S. and the world's other "great democracies" pointed at it and said, "See how awful those commies are?" Today these would be the same right wing hatchet men who would like to erect a wall the entire width of the border with Mexico. How quickly they forget about freedom.

And how elastic is the word in the U.S.? Sometimes it seems like the U.S. is one of few nations doing its best to beat back the forces of freedom. The U.S. doesn't really care about freedom as much as it does about access to markets. Ask the Palestinians. Ask the black South Africans who were ignored by America for decades. Ask the Cuban people who have put together a better medical and education system than the U.S. without economic aid from the giant off its coast.

U.S. officials, who feel free to stagger into most nations and start wars over whatever ails them at the time, believe the small island of Cuba with its almost non-existant air force, and navy, is a possible threat to the U.S. And people read this and believe it. That is the thing about propaganda - to work effectively it really needs a large mass of uneducated people. That's what it has here in the good ole U.S.A. where the GPAs just get lower every year, as the public school is largly ignored. Must be that an educated population asks too many questions.

So just what did we "beat the commies" at? Have you ever really thought of that? And who were these commies anyway? As a matter of fact, outside of the pages of Marx and Engles books, what nation on this earth has ever truly practiced the form of communist government they called for? The answer is simple. None.

Russia and China were (still are, really) police states with dictators who, for the most part, did not allow free enterprise, and with whom we didn't do much trading. Russia and China were also infamous for their refusal - still are - to allow people to exercise freely individual rights. The difference now is that we have free trade with China in which they lie, cheat, steal and generally take advatage of the U.S. on a daily basis. We also have free trade with Russia who is better behaved. In fact, Russia and China, the two "commie monsters" from the not-to-distant past just want to get into your wallet today.

On the other hand, the U.S. seems more socialist all the time. It also has a tint of the police state that seems to darken a bit every year as cops and prosecutors are given even more power and your real rights begin to look a little shaby in comparison. And what ever happened to free enterprise? The only truly free enterprise out there today can be found in the illegal drug market. There is real competition and litterally thousand of enterprises with various owners. Virtually everything else has been eaten by a megacorporation and has a monopoly in almost any place it resides.

So we are more like Russia and China in that respect than we have ever been. In fact, China might be a little more liberal with free enterprise than the U.S. Russia too.

And where is the free enterprise in our banks and financial markets? It is not there. the government takes money from you and gives it to the banks and financial markets to keep them running. You voluntarily give them your money as well, which they often gamble away leaving you broke. These are very traditional Russian and Chinese practices. So who won that Cold War?

Russia and China haven't begun to practice the "American way," not as much as we have adopted their old attributes.

And look at our democracy? Where did that go? That used to be our ace in the hole. Russia didn't have a form of government as fair; neither did China. But they are catching up. And we are falling behind. Our entire government, every branch, has been corrupted by corporate funds. We have become a nation of classes which are more distinct and varied every year.

We elect millionaires who purposely act against our interests. Then we elect them again. We get all bent out of shape over who should be able to marry whom as the government runs out the back door with our piggy banks. Distraction is the form of government practiced in the U.S. and portrayed as "news" by it various propaganda agencies who want to sell you a medication that will sicken you so badly you will have to report to America's Third World medical system where an infection will seal your fate. This is a realistic depiction of how you might pass from this world.

So, we have no representative democracy. We have no true free enterprise. We are losing individual rights on a daily basis as the courts have made a practice of ruling in favor of anyone but the people. We didn't beat any Russians. We didn't beat any Chinese. Today we prefer to pick on much less powerful nations.

The so-called Red Scare of 60 years ago was as phony as the invisible "weapons of mass destruction" were in Iraq. The "Red Scare" did a lot for China and Russia though. Can't say it did much for the U.S. It's lunacy and spending splurges, it's transformation of the U.S. into the world's most powerful military nation - everything good we might have become has been used to manufacture more bombs. And all in the name of protecting ourselves from what most likely wasn't even a threat.