Cult of Personality

In the heat of the Cold War, American propagandist coined an effective term for the Soviet Union’s leadership. We called it a “cult of personality” ... meaning that Stalin and other despots there ruled through the force of their personal whims.  The Dems and media have figured that they can smear Trump with a similar pejorative. He is now a leader of a cult ... meaning that those of us who agree with him are mindless zombies ... see: Deprogramming the Cult.

However, this is a flawed analogy because many of Trump’s fans, like myself, find that he has a sandpaper personality ... yet still admire his policies ... see: The Truth. So, kind readers, I guess we might instead best be dubbed a “cult of policies?”

Questionable Quote

Anyone who does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it back has no head. -- Vladamir Putin

Cuba Today

I recently mentioned that liberal friends returned from Cuba (right before Castro boxed). ... see: Measure of the Man. As I have indicated, they would not go back for a variety of reason ... but mostly because of the poverty and oppressive atmosphere. However, they did relate a few interesting facts about their experience:

Cuba imposes a 4% tax on converting foreign currency to Cuban currency ... except for American dollars which are hit with an additional 20% surcharge. You had to use this Cuban currency scam because you cannot use credit cards. For less than a week in poverty-stricken Havana, they had to bring in almost $3,000 US.

The primary protein offered at meals was pork ... almost exclusively. And, although they do have cattle, very little beef is eaten. Also though Cuba is surrounded by water, fish is usually not available. Guess why fishing boats are not permitted to fish these plentiful waters? You guessed it ... any boat going out would not come back.

Cuba was once the sugar cane capital of the world. ... and it was the Soviet Union buying this sugar that supplied most of Cuba's hard currency. Today there is virtually no sugar cane grown in Cuba. These fields are all now lying fallow.

They were warned not to talk politics anywhere because everything is bugged -- hotel rooms, cabs, restaurants, even churches. Therefore conversations with Cubans were very circumspect. But as best as they could determine almost every young person wanted to flee Cuba.

Shades ...

of the cold-war Soviet Union under Stalin when state dissenters were whisked away to insane asylums to keep them quiet, the right-wing author and movie producer, Dinesh D'Souza, has been sentenced to continued weekly psychological counseling by a liberal judge in New York ... see: WND Article. This punishment is on top of his eight-month prison sentence, community service and a $30,000 fine for violating federal political contribution laws and lying to the FBI regarding it.

Now I cannot excuse D'Souza's behavior in this matter, but anyone with open eyes would understand that thousands of other Americans ... mostly liberals ... could of and probable should of suffered the equivalent consequences as D'Souza. Yet the heavy thumb of our government is selective in only punishing state dissenters ... very much like in the old cold-war Soviet Union.

War Drums

One must pause to consider seriously what might transpire if Russia decides to go beyond even the Ukraine and invade a member of NATO … such as the Czech Republic, Poland, or perhaps Estonia.  The United States and the rest of the European NATO members (see: NATO Membership) are obliged by Article 5 of the NATO Alliance Treaty to respond in kind … see: NATO Article 5.  The question is would they or we? 

The combined standing European troops of the NATO countries number some five million … and including the United States, over six million.  This would be pitted against a well-trained, well equipped and brutal Russian Army of some 1.5 million.  Of course there is a major difference … these European NATO troops are composed of numerous social and gender experiments ill-equipped and ill-trained to shed blood for any cause let alone a serious tangle with the Russian bear … particularly if such a tussle is over a former SSR.

We have seen the reluctance of even the Ukrainian troops to respond to the recent Russian belligerency in the Crimea. Therefore I am just a bit dubious as to how these same Ukrainian troops might react to a full-scale Russian invasion of Western Ukraine.  And this zeitgeist may well be duplicated in other Eastern European countries which in fact are NATO members ... but which are not that far removed in time from the subservience they were forced to experience under the Soviet Union’s domination.  I hope I am wrong if such a situation transpires, but somehow I would not stake a lot of credence in the stalwartiness of such forces opposing such a Russian invasion.

Of course, I also do not have a lot of faith that President Barack “Another Red Line” Obama would also not go wobbly in such a situation. Let us not forget that, during the height of the Cold War, America’s major deterrent was atomic weaponry which we forswore to use to counteract a much more massive Soviet army if they were to invade Western Europe.  I am reasonably certain that this “mutually assured destruction” option is no longer an arrow in Obama’s quiver. If it were, I think he might have brought it up by now.

The consequences of a Russian invasion of one or more NATO members which were former SSRs and an inconsequential NATO response would not only begin to reassemble the Soviet Union …  it would also effectively kill NATO. This would be a disastrous legacy for Obama … not that I think he would take such a failing too much to heart.

This then is a dangerous game of chicken that Russian President Putin seems to be contemplating. But, if he is using his Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton/John Kerry interactions over the last five years as his measure of the resoluteness of the United States, I am afraid we may be in for some very bad times.

Help Me ...

I'm befuddled.  How can people who have witnessed the repeated and sorry results (however well-meaning) of ultra-liberal politics ... Detroit; Castro's Cuba; Philadelphia; Washington, DC; Venezuela; the state of California (and many of its locales); Greece; the old Soviet Union; and on and on and on ... still consider that such an orthodoxy is a winning strategy?  Is it that they don't see ... or if they see, they don't understand ... or if they understand, they only seek the narrow and short-term benefits for themselves?

I dearly wish I could appreciate and possibly even decipher such obsessive and guileless behavior.

Afterward: I think that there actually is another category of Marxists ... and that is comprised of those people who believe, Christ-like, that they are helping the downtrodden.  But clearly this aid is only temporary because, longer-term, the predictable result is that they are always worse-off ... witness the above list.  Rather, "Teach a man to fish ..."