Modern Communists

Unless a recount changes the result in GA, it looks like the Democrats have control over the House, the Senate and the presidency. They now have free rein to make good on their threats to pack the Supreme Court, add PR and DC as states thereby packing the Senate, raise taxes on the "rich," abolish the electoral college, and of course, provide plenty of "free" stuff for their favored constituencies. Their media (and it is their media) will protect them from scandal every step of the way as Joe Biden is elevated to the presidency. I hesitate to use the words "elected" or "won" because of the gnawing questions that continue to swirl around far too many voting irregularities that will never be properly reconciled or investigated. Regardless, Joe will be president on January 20th. 

Those of us who were opposed to all of this will accept the Dem's ascension to power and move forward. We will wonder about the new Democrat president's cognitive deficits (which are real and growing more obvious by the month), observe his administration's actions, criticize his missteps, and point out his scandals, but we won't call him names that have no basis in reality. We'll watch as both the House and the Senate enact legislation that will cripple economic growth, make more and more people dependent of big government, and strangle us all with regulations that provide little benefit but maximum control.

Biden now has the unenviable job of managing the new Democratic party. I use the adjective new to indicate that far too many influencers within the new Democratic party have veered hard left and are now energized by their ascension to power. The party's aging leaders will try (or not) to maintain some semblance of moderation or centrism, but the socialist wing is taking over. With the explicit assistance of the trained hamsters of the  mainstream media, along with quiet supporters throughout social media, the new Democrats are positioned to transform our way of life—and not in a good way.

Sarah Chamberlain has written a scathing commentary in which she refers to the hard-left influencers within the new Democratic party (e.g., Bernie Sanders, the members of the "Squad") as "modern communists." She writes:

Modern communists do not usually call themselves such. They do not talk about workers rising up and seizing the Means of Production.

Instead, modern communists adopt a rhetorical stance where they assume that all people and all property are ALREADY COLLECTIVIZED, then calmly discuss what WE should do:

• What WE should ALLOW people to own.
• What WE should ALLOW people to do.
• What WE should ALLOW people to say.
• How WE should ALLOW people to use their property.
• How WE should ALLOW people to conduct their businesses,
• … and WHO should be ALLOWED,
• … and WHERE.
• How WE should ALLOW people to raise their children. Who should be GIVEN which roles within society.

- etc.

The issue under discussion is always something sympathetic, something most decent people would like to see fixed: Intergenerational poverty, police brutality, environmental degradation, bigotry, violence.

But the solutions modern communists put forward are rarely passive, and they are never liberating. If a problem can be solved by individual action, voluntary charity, by the free market, or by the passage of time, that is never seen as good enough. In fact, nothing that fails to increase the power and control of governments or certain institutions (or to grow the people’s dependence on them) is ever regarded as a solution at all.

There are ominous signs that the "modern communists" are winning. By controlling speech, they control ideas. By cancelling those who object, they cause others who might object to self-censor. 

As an example, let's consider their actions over the past 11 months of COVID. At least some of the Democrat governors (Newsom, Whitmer, Cuomo, come to mind) have insisted on near-dictatorial (not to mention nonsensical, anti-scientific, and catastrophist) control of their states. They argue that only they can dictate the terms that ALLOW: 

• what people can do (e.g., mandatory mask mandates); 
• what people can say (e.g., social media censoring anyone who suggests that catastrophist hype is nothing more than propaganda); 
• how people can use their property (e.g., closing restaurants and arresting/fining those who push back); 
• how owners can conduct their businesses (e.g., you're non-essential—close down); 
• who should be allowed to go where (e.g., stay out of parks, off beaches, no gatherings of more than n people, except of course, for gatherings the "modern communists" approve of). 

The state knows all, the state knows best, the state will have all the solutions—bow down to the established "experts," even as they demonstrate they are often wrong and consistently ineffective.

Chamberlain continues:

In order for modern communists to have the latitude to execute their plans, they need every citizen to be as weak and dependent as possible. They especially need the middle tiers of management, professions, and bureaucracy to be filled with minimally competent placeholders who owe their position to political and institutional favor. These sorts of people, since they are only able to achieve their present position through the system, are more pliable to coercion and less likely to see freedom in any aspect of life as promising or beneficial.

Add victimization to the mix and you have a toxic, yet effective brew. 

And anyone who refuses to drink is branded as uncaring or insensitive or stupid or patriarchal or deplorable or worse. None of that is true, but modern communists don't really care about truth. They control the message.  Their truth is pushed by their media flunkies, by academia, by the entertainment industry, and by the state as the truth. It isn't ... not even close.

Chamberlain concludes by noting that many of us see the rising tide of "modern communism," we sense that bad things are on the horizon if it is left unopposed, but we are fat and happy. We, like the Cubans and the Venezuelans in our own hemisphere and within just a few generations, believe/hope that it can't happen here. 

But it can.

She writes:

Most people who have not committed to the cause of freedom are not conscious supporters of modern communism. Some hold out the futile hope that things will all go back to normal, others have convinced themselves that what is happening is inevitable and cannot be opposed. Both are dead wrong. As open struggle against collectivism, communism, authoritarianism, and globalism rises, both of these positions will weaken, and support for freedom will grow.

If you have the courage to act where I do not, here is what I WILL do:

• If you speak out against them, I will listen. 
• If you act against them, I will not stand in your way. 
• If they portray you as uncool, cringey, old-fashioned, unintelligent, or low-class, I will not laugh at you or think less of you. 
• If they call you a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, Nazi, granny killer, etc., I will not believe them, nor will I care. 
• If they call you a terrorist or an extremist, I will not assume that you are in the wrong. 
• When they ask me questions, I will lie, forget, or evade as I am able. 
• When they tell me their version of history, I will smile and nod and know they are liars. 
• If they dispossess you, I will share what I can. 
• If they martyr you, my children will learn your name as that of a hero. 
• If you have the courage to be shameless in opposing them, you will be honored in my house.

I, and tens of millions of others, will do the same.