I was copied on a three-way exchange of e-mails over the weekend that offers insights colored by intimate understanding of life under communism. With their permission, I am sharing excerpts below.
Doug lives in Moscow. He has been in Russia and neighboring countries for more than a decade. Will has spent a great deal of time in Eastern Europe. John lived in Venezuela under the rule of Chavez for several years.
Setting off the conversation was a perceived parallel between Sarah Palin's convention speech and Lenin's March 1919 speech advocating the dictatorship of the proletariat:
Doug
Last night, we arrived at the dacha as we normally do. Our friend Yuri was there -- a very plugged-in guy. He told me he listened to both McCain's and Palin's speeches on CNN. He said he was impressed by both as orators. He was also shaken by something in Palin's speech. His initial reaction: "I know I have heard that somewhere before."
After a few hours, he said, he pulled down a copy of the speech Lenin gave in 1919 to the first Communist Party Conference. This was sort of like an inauguration for Lenin after (actually really before) defeating the Whites. It was what Palin kept saying: "I am one of you."
According to Yuri, Lenin not only said the same thing, but made it a central tenet of the government of the USSR that it would be a government comprised of people with no qualifications to be in government. This incompetence, he said, was one of the largest contributing factors to the failure of the Soviet system.
Yuri turned to me and said very gravely: "It is a sad day when the Great United States of America is about to be led by people with no qualifications in government at all."
Will
I think your friend is on to something.
The clear message from the Republicans with their nomination of Palin is that experience and qualifications are absolutely irrelevant. This is a recurring pattern from the last 8 years in the Bush administration. A favorite Republican saying is to say that the only way to fix to government is to "starve the beast". This has been a simple slogan in prior elections –- a euphemism for down-sizing government. Bush has actually put this in practice. Consider some of the results:
- A horse show judge was in charge of FEMA’s response to hurricane Katrina. American citizens drowned in their nursing home beds because no one was there to move them to higher ground.
- In 2002, the people in charge of satellite surveillance of Iraq allowed us to tell the United Nations that Iraq had doubled truck movements in and out of suspected chemical weapons manufacturing sites. It turned out that we had doubled the number of satellite photos taken each day. The number of truck movements had actually never changed. Oh, it wasn’t a chemical manufacturing facility either.
- Palin’s would-be predecessor told the American people that we would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq.
Only one television network in the United States bothered to go back and compare McCain’s acceptance speech to Bush’s acceptance speech in 2000. Amazingly, Bush’s speech and McCain’s speech were virtually identical (except for the life history). In 2000, Bush promised to end division and partisan politics in Washington. Bush promised to reach across the aisle and work together with Democrats. Bush promised exactly the same tax, environmental, energy, and social policies as McCain. Who was the one television network that did their homework and some meaningful analysis? Comedy Central.
McCain wants the housewife vote. So, he nominated a housewife to be Vice President of the United States. It’s not a nice story or a breath of fresh air. It’s an insult to everyone in government and public service. True, Obama doesn’t have much more experience, but at least he’s been vetted and answered tough questions the last two years. After 10 days, Palin has never been interviewed or answered a single question, even from Fox.
Washington is being dumbed down step by step. Palin is just the next step in the process of structural incompetence your father in law was describing.
John
Comrade Will is right.
The only thing that the ruling Republican elite care about is concentrating wealth and power. It's all about the tax code. Government is a hindrance, unless it is the source of a bloated contract or a bailout for fiscal irresponsibility. And, because they are the elite, and therefore, there aren't enough of them to form a majority, they have to find ways to get votes from dumb-assed crackers.
Consider their social agenda, which appeals to fear and hate and really is about creating distractions and wedges that divide the working and middle classes and get them to vote against their own economic self interest.
None of the social issue these elitist conservatives rail about costs them one dime or a lick of sweat.
Gun control: Who cares! They live in gated communities with private security. The only thing they have to worry about are Dick Cheney's hunting binges.
Abortion: Say you're against it but do nothing about it. That way you can divide people just enough to get them angry and distracted, but not so much that the vast majority of Americans who support abortion rights actually get politically active. Ask yourself, with the GOP in control of three branches of government as recently as two years ago, what did they do about the issue, other than posture and make noise? Nothing, of course. Now, does any rational person think the GOP wants Roe v. Wade overturned? Ha! That is the last thing they want. 50 million pissed off women taking to the streets.
Creationism and prayer in school: Who cares! They send their kids to private schools. Who gives a fuck what they teach the dumb-assed crackers who are too poor to send their kids to better schools. Excellent way to divide and conquer. It also is a great subterfuge against teachers unions, which tend to be Democratic.
Universal health care: "Socialized medicine!" Heaven forbid, even if it is good enough for Congress AND THEIR FAMILIES.
Flag burning! Give me a break.
If you want to know what the GOP is all about, just ask yourself a couple of questions when you hear their spiels: First, what's it going to cost them? Second, exactly what emotions are they trying to evoke from their audiences? More than likely, fear and hate.
The GOP's magnificent cynicism was put on display at their convention, when you had super rich Mitt Romney of Mass. railing against eastern elites, three-times divorced cross-dressing NYC born and bred Rudy G. railing about small town values, and Pork Queen Palin railing against special interests. McCain seems to spend all his time worrying about pork, which amounts to less than 1% of the federal budget. Truly, this man is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. All of this with the backdrop of the GOP as the party of change. Huh! Tell me again who has been in the white house for the last eight years? If for nothing else, you have to admire their audacity. Truly brass balls! Don't worry though, there isn't a television media that will point it out, other than The Daily Show.
I leave you with this anecdote: In 2000, I was at an event at some agricultural center in Gallatin. Cheney was there, on the stage with Alan Simpson and some other old white guys. Simpson got up there and told a barn full of crackers that Bush-Cheney would eliminate the "death tax" -- a line received with thunderous applause. The Death Tax, a/k/a the estate tax, of course, is paid by less than a fraction of 1% of all Americans. If I recall correctly, it was put in place around the turn of the 20th century to prevent the hereditary amassing of wealth by the robber baron classes, thus setting up a permanent ruling class. I looked up on the stage where Cheney and Simpson were taking it all in. They were laughing.
If the GOP manages to win this election, I will come to share their contempt for the American voting pubic.