I decided to read a book on Stalin. He was possibly the evilest person in history. He had the good fortune of being in power concurrently with another more notoriously evil person – Hitler. Thus, his starving and murdering tens of millions of people evaded the spotlight it deserved. I contacted my resident Russia expert, Dennis Prager, and he recommended a highly regarded newer biography which had access to information on Stalin released from the archives after the fall of the Soviet Union. The book is Stalin by Oleg V. Khlevniuk.
Here I am walking around countries that were formerly part of the Communist Bloc while reading this book on this very “uplifting” topic while on vacation. I am sure most of you are thinking I must have a screw loose somewhere. But, no; I was getting a lot of clarity. For example, Czar Nicholas abdicated eight months before the Bolsheviks got anywhere near power. It was one of the two periods Russia had a democratic government. The other being after the fall of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin was in charge before the current authoritarian took over. And then they had a three-year civil war. Near the end of that war, their leader Lenin dies. Quite a messy start.
As I am reading, the proverbial pieces suddenly fall into place. This is just like what is going on in America today except for the mass murders. Let me explain:
The Democrats used to be the party of the “common” person. Then things started to evolve. Remember when you heard all the time Walmart was the big bad corporation going into towns across the nation, thus shutting down the local small businesses? Then that issue disappeared. It disappeared for two reasons. Costco was doing the same thing, but they were unionized. Then the internet came along, and Amazon was doing the same thing, but Jeff Bezos was funding left wing projects.
There is still another reason. The party was transformed by the educated class into what we now refer to as the “party of the elites.” Those who think they know better than the commoners.
Stalin had the same problem. He had the peasants. And as the author states the leadership hated the peasants. Sound familiar? There was one Democratic leader who talked about how some folks “cling to their guns and religion.” There was another who talked about the “basket of deplorables.” Maybe Stalin used similar language about the hated peasants. Maybe that is where Obama and Clinton got their language about the now-hated working man and small business owner. You know, people just like the peasants who do not want to be controlled by the central government.
The peasants were fighting against Stalin’s latest industrial plan. The peasants knew they were the ones paying for the plan and so did Stalin. Sound familiar? We have a new industrial plan. It is called “renewable energy.” The current peasants know that the plan being dictated to them will not work. They balk at the ridiculously prohibitive cost of cars being sold to them. They laugh at the lack of charging stations available, and they cringe at absurdly expensive power bills they are getting because of the inefficient windmills and solar panels their tax dollars keep subsidizing. They watch as their government hands billions of their hard-earned dollars to large companies to build computer chip plants and wonder why these large, wealthy companies cannot self-finance.
The government dictates they must use these overpriced, inefficient vehicles and blames them for not accepting the unappealing product.
In 1935, during one of Stalin’s reigns of terror, he decided he had to look more moderate to the public. He changed the election rules to include some previously restricted “alien elements.” Sound familiar? Democrats used the pandemic to justify making often illegal changes to election rules to make it easier for people to vote. It was only an effort to make it easier to post ballots in many questionable ways, such as ballot harvesting and counting mailed-in ballots even though they were not properly signed.
Many states have changed those rules, but many have not. Now the Democrats want to have noncitizens voting. They issue illegal aliens driver’s licenses which is just a step away from voting. The same people want to have elections become foregone conclusions — kind of like what Stalin had.
There were many “show trials.” After the mysterious murder of Sergei Kirov, a former ally of Stalin who was a perceived threat, the supposed group of people who arranged the murder (even though Stalin was behind it) were tried. There were many trumped up charges leading to show trials and then either trips to Siberia or the firing squad. Sound familiar? Charging your political opponents with questionable violations, then trying them in front of rigged juries and/or judges — have you seen anything like that lately?
Then there is taking control over the educational system more interested in feeding the needs of the educators and indoctrinating the students with a political bent than teaching. There is lawlessness and deflated police to control the anarchy.
We could go on in the comparison of current America to Stalin’s rule.
While the Left is running around scaring us about the takeover of the country by a dangerous madman and calling him names like “Hitler” (mega fundraiser Jeffrey Katzenberg), their own party has devolved into a familiar episode of how Stalin ruled the Soviet Union. And just as his press remained silent on his actions, our press today not only remains silent – they are complicit.