When I was young -- at least after the revolution -- May day was international labor day, and the entire TV was given over to people draped in red, wearing uniforms, carrying the flag of butchers, and parading endlessly past dais draped in red. On the dais (daises?) sat senilocrats (totally a word) trying to look dignified while they plotted how to put a knife in the other's back.
They did it all, constantly, for a little bit more of foreign goods purchased at the state store, another dacha for their protracted vacations and, the worst part, all the treachery and everything they got for keeping other humans enslaved mind and body? Got them a lifestyle about the level of middle-middle class Americans or the inhabitants of any other relatively free country.
The truth is that tyranny is the fast track to starvation, while freedom produces so abundantly that even the poor, even now, in our country, live a lifestyle that would be the envy of the richest in eras past.
And yet, like the senilo-kakistocrats of the past, our own would be forever rulers prefer a regime that enslaves all and makes all poorer, in exchange for their being just a little better off than, say, a steady-working craftsman in the US.
I think they prefer to be somewhat poorer provided they are envied, because the rest of the country is starving and grubbing in the dark.
I don't understand it. Perhaps because I never cared how well others do, provided I can do fairly well myself.
But some people can't enjoy their good, unless others are destroyed.
Which is what those endless parades meant. "Look how strong and wonderful we are. Look at our might and despair."
Don't despair. Those parades were a lie, complete with recycling military vehicles, etc. to pass before the podium.
Tyranny is always weak. In the process of starving everyone, it destroys its own strength. So it can's last.
Sure this is more comforting when watched from across the world, in some place of warmth and abundance.
But it is still comforting nonetheless. The dark times don't last. They can't. The boot can't stamp on the human face forever. we'll chew through the leader and bite the foot well before that. But also, the leg has no strength because it hasn't eaten in several days, and the foot in the boot is a skeleton.
Years ago -- and you'll have to forgive the slightly hallucinatory tone of this post. For some reason ear infections always make me not quite able to focus. Right now literally, I believe due to fever -- a friend said that the left always screams loudest and appears strongest when it's losing.
Since then I've seen no reason to doubt him. In fact, I believe the more they try to appear powerful, the more insecure they are.
And I think the current insanity is a mark of how scared they are. They've glimpsed the abyss, and it's a long long way down.
Does this mean I think they'll lose the elections? No. Unless something very strange happens. We should still vote -- against them -- in case a miracle occurs.
But at this point people are saying and seeing things that were literally hidden and hushed up before. We're thinking things that were unthinkable.
They're not winning. They're making a much bigger display of control, precisely because they lost it. And they know it.
We're not losing. We're coming back slowly from the totalitarian folly of the 20th century.
It takes time.
I don't like it any better than you do. I likely have less time than a lot of you.
But would you rather, like Moses, perish having seen the promised land of freedom,or be one of those who lived in calmer times, and died without ever even knowing they were prisoners, body and soul? Or that the future wasn't endless red parades forever?
I'll take our fraught time, our chance at freedom, our chance at rebuilding an imperfect Republic that cherishes individual freedom.
And that's a labor I can believe in.
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