This saying of W.C. Fields came to mind when a I read a post on a the political section of the company bulletin board. A couple of days ago, one of my co-workers posted an editorial American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper, by one Stanislav Mishin. The article originally appeared in the April, 27, 2009, online version of Pravda, which has the same name as the former political newspaper of the Soviet Union. According to Pravda the editorial was reprinted from Mishin's own blog Mat Rodina.
According to Mishin, "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."
Mishin blames our "decent" into Marxism partly on the degenaracy of average American due to dumbed downed educations and television programs, their lack of Christianity, and their addiction to MacDonald's quarter pounder.
But the final straw, according to Mishin was the election of Barack Obama,
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
That's when the quotation from W.C. Fields came to me, an honest person would have realized that Mishin's editorial was at best written by someone who is either totally ignorant about America and its people, is totally deranged, or is being paid a substantial amount of money to publish this anti-american nonsense.
But what about the suckers and chumps? I'll talk more about them later. First, let's look at the weaknesses in the Mat Rodina blog post. After reading this "editorial" I found its premises and opinions simplistic and stupid. At the moment, anti-American sentiment is high in Russia and Capitalism Gone with a Whimper, is typical of such screeds. It reminds me of the Tsarist Okrana's anti-semitic hoax, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mishin's blog post was published in Pravda online, which is different from Pravda the newspaper. After looking at its web site, it looked like the Russian version of the National Enquirer.
What is irritating is that extreme right-wing media is hailing this article as some kind of foreign insight into the fall of the American Republic. First of all Mishin is just a Russian Blogger. That makes him an expert on American Affairs how? My friend Jeri has a Facebook page for her dog Truman. I trust Jeri's dog more than I trust Stanislav Mishin. I am not the only one who is totally unimpressed by Mishin's jermiad against President Obama and his alleged efforts to turn America into a Communist state. Another vexing thing was that while Mishin's anti-American rant has drawn rave reviews from various right-wing know-nothings, and paranoics, there have been very few articles countering Mishin's warped interpretation of America's political, social and economic situation. Fortunately, I was able to find a few honest people who refuse to accept the Mishin's fabrications.
Reginald Killingley in a letter to the editor of his local paper, commented upon reading Mishin's opinion piece noted the following
"On the Saturday Forum page Tom Leahy referenced an article "American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper," by "Mat Rodina" on Pravda Online . This publication is not the old Soviet-era newspaper but a web-based nationalist and sensationalist tabloid. Its compelling articles include titles such as "Men can really breasfeed [sic] and have third nipple," and "Aliens downed Tunguska meteorite to save Earth." Is Pravda Online a source you can trust?"
The media watchdog Media Matters analyzed Mishin's editorial and reported the following,
Several media figures falsely claimed an opinion piece on the Russian website PRAVDA On-line, which attacked President Obama for instigating an "American decent [sic] into Marxism," was published by the Russian newspaper Pravda, which is not related to PRAVDA On-line.
Blogger Jenny Kakasulerf, was also dismissive of Mishin and the reactionary pundits who spread his so-called editoral.
Mishin is the authority on capitalism because he lived under socialism, and thus can atest to it's evils, and why we should avoid socialism at all costs. However, Mishin is arguing for the collapse of the global financial markets, including our own, and mocks our way of life. It seems the GOP, and Rush Limbaugh in particular, who unapologetically admits that he hopes the president fails, have quite a bit in common with their new socialist media darling. Except, the only capitalism he supports, is an internal capitalism that operates solely on the basis of Russian entrepreneurialism and investment, through maximum government intervention so as not to enrich the few, that is cut-off from the globalized marketplace. Isolationism to the highest degree.
The same boogeyman, fear tactics that have been employed most notably by the conservative wing of American politics to invoke Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Russian Socialism are, at best, disingenuous. These same intellectually dishonest commentators were certainly lackadaisical in their rhetoric when Bush initiated the TARP plan, and effectively, the largest government bailout in history. Eight years of deficit explosions, and not one single tea party. Beck is not alone in claiming to be an independent, though his hate speech, directed primarily at the left, does not fall on deaf ears and makes his political leanings more than obvious.
These claims of socialism lack admission of the fact that we already are, and have been for quite some time, a socialist country. Any time that the government redistributes wealth through taxation--that is socialism. It is not going away any time soon. FOX News' lovefest with George W. Bush did not stop him from growing the government to a larger size than it has ever been. Neither democrats, nor republicans, see value in a society completely absent of social services, and nowhere near a majority of Americans are persuaded by libertarian ideology.
Socialism is used interchangeably with fascism as an attempt by conservative pundits to confuse the mass public and invoke an irrational fear of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, which is why they are constantly forcing the comparison down their audiences throats. When free-speaking individuals start being “disappeared,” when protests are met by violent military action (think Tiananman Square), and when journalists start getting gunned down in our streets, like they do in Russia, then perhaps I will take claims of fascism more seriously, and the accusations from Russia that we are light on human rights.
The spread and wide acceptance of Mishin's anti-American rant is typical of type of commentary coming from "conservative media" right now. It is perhaps unfair and cruel to refer to all people who approve of or agree with Mishin's editorial as suckers and chumps. But a sucker or a chump are words I would use to describe my co-worker who posted Mishin's Pravda editorial. He accepted on face value because it agreed with some of his prejudices against President Obama's administration. There was no effort of verify or examine Mishin's statements because he had seen them posted somewhere on the internet.
Andrew Sullivan in a recent post about Sarah Palin best describes this worrisome trend.
the broader problem with American conservatism right now. It is less a movement than an industry. From Fox News to talk radio to conservative publishing houses, it has created an alternate and lucrative media reality that is worth a fortune to those able to exploit it. Alas, these alternative media thrive on paranoia, hatred of liberal elites and growing extremist rhetoric made worse by a hermetically sealed echo chamber of true believers.
It is both strange and sad that as America and the world are facing political, economic and global crises that there are Americans who read, approve and spread the works like American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper, by Stanislav Mishin. Again, as W.C. Fields observed, you can't cheat an honest man (or woman). And now is the time for honest people, people of good will, to come together and work to solve the problems facing both America and the world.
If there are those who choose to believe the sentiments expressed by Stanislav Mishin, all I can do expose the errors and encourage them to listen to the angels of their better nature. If they won't do that, then they deserve to be called suckers and chumps.
Capitano Tedeschi
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1 comment:
The wing nuts are like cornered rats. They are fighting and whining for their lives.
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