Where Are We?

For John, BLUF:  Our Society is showing signs of misfunction, and we should do something about it.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now

Here is the sub-headline:

A government with a permanent deficit and a bloated military. A bogus ideology pushed by elites. Poor health among ordinary people. Senescent leaders. Sound familiar?

From The Free Press, by Professor Niall Ferguson, Thursday, 20 June 2024.

Here is the lede plus five:

The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in—the second one—heats up.

I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991.

This view is less controversial now than it was then. China is clearly not only an ideological rival, firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and one-party rule. It’s also a technological competitor—the only one the U.S. confronts in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s a military rival, with a navy that is already larger than ours and a nuclear arsenal that is catching up fast. And it’s a geopolitical rival, asserting itself not only in the Indo-Pacific but also through proxies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”

I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?

Yes, I know what you are going to say.

Then the Author goes on to look at comparisons between the late Soviet Union and current America.  Things like the dynamism of the ledership and population death rates, including suicides and drug overdoses.

After looking at the economy the Author looks at the American Sociwety and the way it is divided between the upper class and the working class and looks at DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).♠

The equivalent falsehoods in late Soviet America are that the institutions controlled by the (Democratic) Party—the federal bureaucracy, the universities, the major foundations, and most of the big corporations—are devoted to advancing hitherto marginalized racial and sexual minorities, and that the principal goals of U.S. foreign policy are to combat climate change and (as Jake Sullivan puts it) to help other countries defend themselves “without sending U.S. troops to war.”

In reality, policies to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” do nothing to help poor minorities. Instead, the sole beneficiaries appear to be a horde of apparatchik DEI “officers.” In the meantime, these initiatives are clearly undermining educational standards, even at elite medical schools, and encouraging the mutilation of thousands of teenagers in the name of “gender-affirming surgery.”

Anyway, it is an interesting critique of where we, in America, are today, and some areas we need to examine to do better in the future.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  In my mind DEI is like PERT, which was all the rage in management terms in the 1960s, but then was found to have not been a real thing, at least in the project floouted as its success, the Polaris Missile Program, but rather a way of conveying information on a project.

Show Trial on Capitol Hill

For John, BLUF:  This is old, but pertinent.&nhsp; There isn't much of a case for the Lego Insurrection, that is not going to stop the bien-pensant from pressing forward and damaging as many Trump supports as they can.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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DOJ quietly acknowledges there was no sedition at the US Capitol

Here is the sub-headline:

Media hyperbole was the root cause of fabricating crimes that didn't exist

From The Law Officer Blog, by "Law Officer, 30 March 2021.

Here is the lede plus three:

Despite all the outrage and the threats of charging “insurrectionists” with sedition—the act of attempting to overthrow the government—proving them based upon actual facts and evidence seems to be increasingly unlikely.  For example, Michael Cantrell reported on America’s Sheriff that:

“Many of the trials for individuals involved in the Capitol riot of January 6th have started and much to the chagrin of liberals everywhere, the charges these folks are facing aren’t quite as serious as we were all led to believe they would be.  In fact, the Justice Department has now said that the body of evidence in these cases is not as damaging as it was previously thought to be.”

Further, developing reports indicate that none of the 400 people who have been arrested for their involvement in the riot have been charged with sedition, according to the Post Millennial.  The most serious charge that has been brought against a defendant in this incident has been assault.  To be clear, there is quite a leap between the charges of assault—and the charges of conspiring to overthrow the government.

Even more perplexing, while others have been charged with conspiracy and obstruction, there’s a rather inconvenient fact that prosecutors must reckon.  As the Post Millenial explained: “Others have been charged with conspiracy, and obstruction. While five people lost their lives during the riot, only one was killed with a weapon, and that was Ashli Babbit, who died after being shot by an unnamed Capitol Police Officer.”

Yes, this is old but the narrative is going one way and the actual story another, as the first day of House Hearings on the Lego Inurrection shows.

It seems unlikely to me that the trajectory of the House Hearings will change.  It seems equally unlikely that we will get to the historic truth, as opposed to the "truth" that Speaker Pelosi wishs to put forward.  This is like a Soviet Show Trial, and that is sad.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

What We Are Focused On

For John, BLUF:  The Chinese Government is committing crimes in the US, but our Government is focused on proving its own Citizens traitors.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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DOJ Drops Charges Against 5 Possible Chinese Spies as FBI Focuses on January 6

Here is the sub-headline:

FBI Drops the Ball, DOJ Drops the Charges

From PJ Media, by Mr Kevin Downey, Jr, 26 July 2021, 3:37 PM ET.

Here is the lede plus three:

Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped charges against five Chinese scientists spies who hid their involvement with the Chinese military in order to obtain work visas at American universities.

Prosecutors stated they would no longer pursue visa fraud and various other charges against the five scientists, who were looking to work at universities in California and Indiana.

FACT-O-RAMA! There are typically half a million Chinese students in the U.S. every year.

Judges have dismissed parts of the cases against two Chinese researchers after the FBI (shockingly?) failed to inform the suspects of their Miranda rights against self-incrimination.  Miranda rights are the rights every American with a TV has heard a thousand times:  the rights to remain silent or have your words used against you, and to have an attorney.

Yesterday was the Birthday of the FBI, back in 1909.

Yes, there was some bungling, but the FBI is laser focused on the Lego Insurrection.

Yesterday my Middle Brother sent me a link from The Old Gray Lady that started out:

Bret Stephens:  Hi, Gail [Collins]. I don’t think there’s much doubt among reasonably sane people about what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6.  Do we really need a House committee to investigate it?

I think the Commentariat has a view as to what happened and thinks that view is widely shared.  They could be wrong.  And, I don't expect the FBI, or the House investigation of the Lego Insurrection to do anything but obscure the mostly peaceful demonstrations that day and the killing of Ms Ashli Babbit.

As they used to say in the Soviet Union, "The future is known; it’s the past which is always changing.”

I added a label, a tag, for President Donald J Trump, because even six months after he left office it is all about him.  You don't wish it to be about President Biden, do you?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

“Miracle on the Vistula River”

For John, BLUF:  The United States has been intertwined with Poland for our whole history as a nation.  From Casimir Pulaski until today, we have worked together, off and on, and we have provided a home for several million Polish Immigrants.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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American Valor Once Thwarted a Marxist Revolution 100 Years Ago—We Can Do It Again

Here is the sub-headline:

Merian C. Cooper helped to stop the Communist takeover of Europe in 1920. Today another Marxist revolution is surging—in the United States.  We can stop it again by following his example.

From American Greatness, by Mr Sheldon Bart, 14 August 2020.

Here is the lede plus two:

Hollywood mogul Merian C. Cooper, creator, producer, and co-director of the original “King Kong,” was an authentic hero of the August 15, 1920 Battle of Warsaw, which in David and Goliath fashion saved Europe from Communism.  Remembered today in its centennial year as the “Miracle on the Vistula River,” the battle eternally links Poland and America in a historic fight against totalitarian revolutionaries.

Following World War I, the map of Europe was radically redrawn.  Poland, occupied and dismembered by aggressor nations for more than 100 years, was recreated as an independent nation. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, having seized control of a demoralized and destabilized Russia in a brazen 1917 coup, marched on Poland in 1919, expecting to sweep across its fragile, uncertain borders and export their Communist revolution to Germany and beyond.

A fighter pilot in World War I, Cooper sought to repay America’s debt to the Polish heroes Tadeusz Kościuszko, Casimir Pulaski, and others who risked their lives fighting for America’s freedom in our Revolutionary War.  He recruited nine fellow American aviators and veterans of the Great War to fly with him on Poland’s behalf against the oncoming Bolsheviks.

We were lucky that Marxism as a militant force was stopped from swallowing up Europe in 1920.  The division of Europe in 1945 was very unfortunatde, but at least we were there in force, and held the line, until nations like Poland and Hungary and East Germany overthrew the yoke of Communism.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Poland Steps Up

For John, BLUF:  .  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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When Poland saved Europe

From the Blog The Daily Chrenk, by Mr Arthur Chrenkoff, 10 August 2020.

Here is the lede:

A hundred years ago this week, a series of biggest battles that Europe were to witness between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 decided the fate of the continent as much as, if not more than, the Great War itself.  In early August 1920, the newly resurrected, independent Poland saved the Eastern Europe, Germany and possibly the rest of the war-exhausted Europe from the triumphant Russian communism.  As a result of a little known war in the distant corners of the continent, the status quo of the East was preserved for another two decades.  It would take the Second World War for the Soviet Union to expand its empire all the way to the Elbe and (briefly) the Adriatic.  Had Poland not triumphed over the Red Army in 1920, and with Germany defeated and disarmed, no significant military force stood between the Soviets and the English Channel.  History of the 20th century would have taken a different course, and not necessarily a better one.

Little known, but important.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Abolishing the Police?

For John, BLUF:  This piece treats all police as alike.  I think that is unfair.  I don't think the police in Lowell are the same as the police in Chicago or the police in Phoenix City.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Harvard Law School Holds Lecture on Police Abolition

From The Harvard Crinson, by Staff Writer Kelsey J. Griffin, 27 February 2020.

Here is the lede plus three:

Vitale serves as the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and on the New York State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  He also consults various international human rights organizations and police departments.

The talk, sponsored by Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left, addressed a range of challenges posed by current police reform efforts.  Promoting his book, “The End of Policing,” Vitale described what he views as the dangers of modern policing tactics and suggested alternatives to the police system.

He began the talk by recounting the story of Deborah Danner, a mentally ill woman who was fatally shot by a New York City police sergeant in 2016.  According to Vitale, Danner’s case calls into question the effectiveness of police training on mental health.

“The reality is that between a quarter and a half of all people killed by police in the United States are having a mental health crisis,” he said.  “It’s the number one indicator of likelihood of ending up being killed by police.”

I obviously have to read the book to understand what this thinks.  The mental illness issue makes some sense.  However, I fear a powerful government abusing this identification of people as mentally ill.  It reminds me of the old Soviet Union.

Looking to the future, we can continue as we are or we can change.  Treating much anti-social behavior as mental illness is one option.  Another is decriminalizing much behavior.  Or, we can surrender to those who would take what they want by force, becoming more like rural Mexico.  My preferred option is that the community pulll together to set standards and the police help.  This means that parents must set standards, for themselves and for their children.  For that to happen the parents must have hope.  And that requires local leadership.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Our Scary Past

For John, BLUF:  Heroes on all sides.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Stanislav Petrov, 'The Man Who Saved The World,' Dies At 77

Here is the sub-headline:

September 18, 201712:32 PM ET Greg Myre - 2016 - square GREG MYRE.

[Stanislav] Petrov died on May 19, at age 77, in a suburb outside Moscow, according to news reports Monday.  He had long since retired and was living alone. News of his death apparently went unrecognized at the time.

Here is the lede plus one:

Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union's Air Defense Forces, and his job was to monitor his country's satellite system, which was looking for any possible nuclear weapons launches by the United States.

He was on the overnight shift in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 1983, when the computers sounded an alarm, indicating that the U.S. had launched five nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.

"The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it," Petrov told the BBC in 2013.

It was already a moment of extreme tension in the Cold War. On Sept. 1 of that year, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines plane that had drifted into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board, including a U.S. congressman. The episode led the U.S. and the Soviets to exchange warnings and threats.

What is missing in this story is a discussion of NATO Exercise ABLE ARCHER 83, which commence on 7 November 1983.  The Soviets reacted, for the first time, by loading out "tactical" nuclear weapons in forward Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) countries.  It was also a moment of nuclear crisis.

Legend has it that Air Force General Leonard H Perroots is the person who told President Reagan that he had to back off because he was scaring the Russians into paranoia.  Wikipedia says that Lenny Perroots "is credited with helping to avert nuclear war during the Able Archer 83 war scare." I am so old I have participated in a couple of ABLE ARCHER Exercises.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Can You Trust Your Intel

For John, BLUF:  Maybe President Trump's caution with regard to the Intelligence Community isn't so foolish after all.  If Maggie Thatcher couldn't scare them into being frank with her, what chance does Mr Trump have?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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How A KGB Double Agent Saved Britain And Won The Cold War For The West

Here is the sub-headline:

Historian Ben MacIntyre's new book, 'The Spy and the Traitor,' tells the thrilling story of how the KGB's Oleg Gordievsky helped check the Soviet Union as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan fought communism.

From The Federalist, by Mr Tony Daniel, 26 October 2018.

Here is the lede plus two:

In his new book The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, veteran espionage historian Ben MacIntyre confirms a troubling decision—or lack thereof—that some had suspected for years.  This is the fact that in 1983 the man overseeing both British spy services MI6 and MI5, head of British Civil Service Robert Armstrong, knew that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s main opponent in the upcoming election was a KGB agent and did not tell her.

Labor Party leader, member of Parliament, and former employment secretary Michael Foot had been a paid KGB agent for decades, and was still on the KGB books as an agent of influence when he headed the British Labor Party and ran against Thatcher for leadership of England in 1983.  Foot would have become prime minister if Labor had won.

MI6 told MI5, its domestic sister agency, and MI5 told Armstrong, but Armstrong kept Foot’s duplicity to himself.  Nobody informed Thatcher.

Here is the Wikipedia article on Mr Michael Foot.

And here is the Wikipedia article on Baron Armstrong of Ilminster (Robert Armstrong).  It turns out that Baron Armstrong was "economical with the truth" when it came to not only Intelligence information, but also pedophiles in the UK Upper Crust.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Bigger Than the Collapse of the Soviet Union?

For John, BLUF:  In this piece the author asks if greater powers are leading us to perdition.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Night of the Demon

From PJ Media, "The Belmont Club", by Mr Richard Fernandez, 29 August 2018.

Here is the lede plus one:

If anyone thought the 2016 revolt against the institutions was transient recent events may force a reconsideration. Instead of dying down open political war now permanently grips Washington.&Nbsp; Abroad, time has healed no wounds; immigration issues have not dissipated in Europe, on the contrary riots are rocking Germany.  The British are still rushing bald-headed toward Brexit with all the incalculable consequences that entails.  What can't be happening is.

According to sources quoted by the NYT "ideological agendas" have spread to the Catholic Church.  After the Vatican's ex-ambassador to Washington Archbishop Carlo Vigano claimed a gay and left wing mafia had been protecting sex abusers within the Church and naming Pope Francis as the Left's man an issue was reliably anti-clerical suddenly turned into conspiracy story.  Jason Horowitz in the NYT concluded that politics must be behind Vigano's allegations.

Yes, The whole world seems to be unable to focus on cooperation and doing right.  Self-centeredness seems to be on the rise.

Here is how the piece ends:

When the totality of cultural warfare and revolution now raging throughout the world is summed we may be watching an event bigger than the fall of the Soviet Union.  The event doesn't have a name yet, on the day we finally understand, it will. But understanding may prove the most difficult part.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world's darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Could it be true?

If you see four horsemen riding down the street, make a quick, but sincere, Act of Contrition.

Regards  —  Cliff

Lillian Hellman Recalled

For John, BLUF:  It was a little squabble, but live on national TV, and thus it went off the rails.  But, it is as alive today as then, what with the Antifa and their ilk pushing a Stalinist line on the rest of us.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Lillian, Mary, and Me

The New Yorker, 16 December 2017, by Mr Dick Cavett.

I had forgotten, or not realized, that Novelist Mary McCarty was on the Dick Cavett show when she said of Playwright Lillian Hellman:

“Everything,” McCarthy replied, smiling.  “I said once in some interview that every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”

Ms Hellman sued Ms McCarthy, PBS and Mr Cavett.  As she died before the suit went to trial, it died with her.

Ms McCarthy was a writer of note in her day.  I read her book, The Group, when it came out, and liked it.

Ms Hellman also managed to get into a twenty-five year fight with Actress Tallulah Bankhead over a fundraiser for Finnish Relief, right after the Soviet Invasion.  Tallulah was for it and Lillian was against it.  But, Ms Hellman had written the play to be performed, The Little Foxes.  I remember Ms Bankhead, the daughter of a US Senator, for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.  Yes, even though filmed exclusively in the lifeboat, Mr Hitchcock does have a cameo appearance.

The thing is, notwithstanding her play (later a film) Watch on the Rhine, Ms Hellman was a through and through Stalinist.  And what bigger lie was there in the 20th Century than being an apologist for Joseph Stalin?

Ms McCarthy, on the other hand, had turned on Communism, becoming first a Trotskyist and then an opponent of Communism.

Regards  —  Cliff

In History, Yesterday

TRIGGER WARNINGS:  Yes, it was all bad.
For John, BLUF:  The ones who praise the Bolshevik Coup are the ones with no imagination.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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On this day, November 7, 100 years ago

From Mr David L Burkheadc, The Writer in Black, 7 November 2017.

The lede:

The Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace overthrowing Kerensky’s provisional government (no, the Bolsheviks did not overthrow the Czar, that was Kerensky), bringing about the nascent Soviet Union that would be the lurking shadow on world politics for the next 74 years with influence still seen today.

And the rest is history unlearned, and millions dead, tens of millions if you include China.

Incidentally, Alexander Kerensky died, at age 89, in New York City.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

TRIGGER WARNING:  This is what you get with "Antifa".

For John, BLUF:  Governments hold People back, and allowing them to die, on the promise of a bright future can be named —Communism.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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MURDERERS' ROW, SOVIET-STYLE

From The Boston Pilot, by Writer George Weigel, 1 November 2017.

Here is the lede plus one:

One hundred years ago, on November 7, 1917, Lenin and his Bolshevik Party expropriated the chaotic Russian people's revolution that had begun eight months earlier, setting in motion modernity's first experiment in totalitarianism.  The ensuing bloodbath was unprecedented, not only in itself but in the vast bloodletting it inspired in wannabe-Lenins over the next six decades.  And still the Leninist dream lives on: in a hellhole like North Korea; in the island prison, Cuba; in what ought to be one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, Venezuela.  Lenin and his disciples created more martyrs in the twentieth century than Caligula, Nero, and Diocletian could have imagined.  And yet, somehow, communist bloodbaths have never drawn the continuous, unambiguous, and deserved condemnation visited upon other tyrannies.

The horrors Lenin let loose have rarely been as powerfully captured as in Anne Applebaum's new book, Red Famine:  Stalin's War on Ukraine.  In her earlier, Pulitzer Prize-winning study, Gulag, Applebaum demonstrated that the slave-labor camps of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "archipelago" were not incidental to the Soviet enterprise, but an integral part of it, economically and politically.  Now, Anne Applebaum makes unmistakably clear that the Holodomor, the terror famine in Ukraine that took some four million lives in 1932-33, was artificially created and ruthlessly enforced by Lenin's heir, Stalin, to break Ukraine's national spirit while providing the faltering Soviet economy with hard currency from agricultural exports.  Or to put it more simply:  Stalin starved some four million men, women, and children to death for ideological and political purposes.

That mass murder could take place on this scale was due to the fact that the fires of utopian, revolutionary conviction incinerated many consciences.  Here, for example, is the chilling, post-Holodomor testimony of one communist activist who helped implement the catastrophic destruction of peasant agriculture in Ukraine and its replacement by ideologically-correct collective farms:  "I firmly believed that the end justified the means.  Our great goal was the triumph of communism, and for the sake of the goal everything was permissible -- to lie, to steal, to destroy hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, all those who were hindering our work, everyone who stood in the way.  And to hesitate or doubt about all this was to give in to 'intellectual squeamishness' and 'stupid liberalism'."

And, here is the Harvey Weinstein question in this genocide:

As repellant as Stalin's Leninist morality of revolution was, the tacit acquiescence in this mass, artificial famine by western reporters who knew what was afoot in Ukraine but wrote nothing about it, so as not to jeopardize their Kremlin sources and their cushy lifestyles in Moscow, was equally revolting.  Here, the chief villain remains the odious Walter Duranty of the New York Times, a principle agent of the cover-up of the Holodomor that continued well into the 1960s -- and that is being revived in Putin's Russia today, as part of its propaganda war against a now-independent Ukraine.

I would be a lot more impressed with The New York Times it if would denounce the late Walter Duranty and return his Pulitzer Prize.

Regards  —  Cliff

Giving in to the Hecklers

For John, BLUF:  We need to support the free speech of those with whom we disagree.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Was Haydn a Bigot?  Are You?

From Pajama Media and Commentor Michael Walsh, 13 August 2017.

Here us the lede plus on:

My friend Dennis Prager, the radio talk-show-host, is conducting the Santa Monica Symphony in a Haydn symphony this Wednesday at Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles, and, of course, his appearance has "drawn fire" and "raised controversy" in the fever swamps of the Left, which is freaking out at the prospect of having a "bigot" on the podium.  Anyone who knows Dennis, or who even listens to his daily radio show on the Salem Network, understands this is codswallop.  Prager is an observant Jew and a man who has spoken and written extensively on the moral issues of our day.  His bona fides as a public intellectual are impeccable.

And yet...

I worry that the lines of descent are being drawn too closely and the heckler's veto is being tolerated more and more.  If we can't explore alternative ideas we will become another toltalitarian nation, be it Communist or Fascist.  If we approach the point where people worry about "not being the first to stop applauding", for fear of drawing attention to themselves, our Democracy will be in serious trouble.  We will become like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or Communist China or Kim's Korea.

All the little "Antifas" running around are Fascist in their mentality and approach.  They seem not to realize that no one can survive the lens of history.  There will be no heroes of the past.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Goolag

For John, BLUF:  Suppressing unpopular opinions is dangerous to democracy, because the "approved" views are not always right.  Remember, Margaret Sanger believed in Eugenics and Woodrow Wilson in Segregation.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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THE GOOGLE ARCHIPELAGO

This is a long post, by Writer Ed Driscoll, with lots of Links and Excerpts.  He put it up late last night, around 11:44.  This is only part of it.

THE GOOGLE ARCHIPELAGO:  In an article at the Weekly Standard that was likely written before Google’s meltdown this week headlined, “You Can’t Say That,” a review of the recent book The Demon in Democracy, Matthew B. Crawford asks, “Has liberalism taken a Soviet turn?”

He then looked at an item from Mr James D Miller, Get ready for the 'tech alt-right' to gain power and influence in Silicon Valley, on 9 August 2017.

The firing of James Damore over his “Google's Ideological Echo Chamber” memo will empower the tech alt-right.

To understand why, imagine yourself as a Republican working at a big Silicon Valley tech company.

You agree with Damore that some average differences between men and women probably explain some of why such a high proportion of computer programmers are male.  You, however, in no way consider yourself sexist.

What Damore’s termination tells you is that many in your field consider people with your beliefs to be unfit to work with.  They hold opinions of you similar to those of former senior Google employee Yonatan Zunger, who wrote about Damore, saying:

“Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you?  I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them.” (Emphasis mine.)

If you are on the right, you probably find it hard to imagine that any reasonably person could read Damore’s memo and think that it reveals the author to be sexist, punchable, or a danger to women’s careers.  It appears to you that Damore was excommunicated for questioning the progressive diversity narrative in a most respectful manner.

Here is a scary quote from the article:

When SJWs in Silicon Valley realize that their ideological enemies are hiding, they might actively search them out.  They might become suspicious of the guy who was the first to stop clapping when a new diversity initiative was announced.  Even worse, SWJs in human resources might become reluctant to hire those with characteristics correlated with conservatism, such as past military service.

Then Mr Driscoll makes a connection:

That line about SJWs becoming suspicious about “the guy who was the first to stop clapping when a new diversity initiative was announced” is Straight Outta the Kremlin, comrade.  In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote of the fate of the man who stopped clapping first:

At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for.  Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). … For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation, continued.  But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion.  It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.

However, who would dare to be the first to stop? … After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first!  And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes!  They were done for!  Their goose was cooked!  They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks!  At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?

* * * * * * * *

Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat.  And, oh, a miracle took place!  Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone?  To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down.  They had been saved!

The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.  That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were.  And that was how they went about eliminating them.  That same night the factory director was arrested.  They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different.  But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”

Then Mr Driscoll rings in a Post at The American Conservative by Mr Rod Dreher, on 11 August, that talks to Google’s Hypocrisy On Gender

At the conclusion of a post today on the hypocrisy of Google firing Damore over his memo but making billions off of gender-based data-mining and targeted advertising code, Rod Dreher links to [this] a scene from the 2006 film on the East German Stasi, The Lives of Others:

HERE

If someone asks you why, in the 1930s and early 1940s, the Germans did nothing, said nothing, remember that Soviet Citizen who was the first to stop clapping.

And then remember that a little deviant thinking is a good thing.  They may be wrong, they may be cuckoo, but their existence, in public, means that you too are free to have divergent thinking.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Mao the Record Setter

For John, BLUF:  A look at Fascism vs Communism.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world

It is The Washington Post, but it is The Volokh Conspiracy, written by Ilya Somin, dateline 3 August 2016 (a year ago). The lede:

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust.  Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust.  But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong.  From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.

I remember, a few years ago, listening to a local NPR Station, around 7:30 in the morning and hearing the person being interviewed saying about the Great Leap Forward, "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette."  That was an absurd defense of Mao, like saying if you want an omelette it is OK to kill ten percent of all the chickens in the United States.

Here is the key takeaway from this bit of history, from the Twitter Account of Mr Frank J. Fleming:

Difference between Nazi and Communist is when you say how horrible Nazis have been, they don't say, "Well, real Nazism has never been tried"

Nazism being a form of Fascism.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Internal State Sponsored Terrorism

For John, BLUF:  Millions dead, for what?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Order of Lenin: ‘Find Some Truly Hard People’

An Opinion Piece by Mr Jonathan Brent, in The Old Gray Lady.

This isn't just about Vladimir Lenin's use of terrorism to manage the crisis of the Soviet Union at the end of World War I.  It is also about Joseph Stalin and his use of terror in the 1930s and again in the early 1950s, including the "(Jewish) Doctors Plot".

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

High Noon Analysis

For John, BLUF:  Missing the forest for the trees.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Allegory for America

Subheadline:

Review:  Glenn Frankel, High Noon:  The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic

Source is The Washington Free Beacon and the Writer is Mr Joseph Bottum.

This review is about a book about the best Western ever.  And the best scene in High Noon?.  Toward the end Johnny, a 14 year old kid, brings around the buckboard and Mrs Kane gets up and the Marshall, as a last act, throws his badge in the dust at the feet of the Town Fathers.

Here is the Penultimate Paragraph of the review:

If Glenn Frankel’s book about High Noon starts out wrong and nonetheless clears the jump, it stumbles on its landing.  And the reason is mostly that Frankel can’t bring himself to reject communism or believe that the Soviets truly constituted a threat.  It’s not that he embraces the Soviet creed.  It’s rather that—a good American liberal of an old-fashioned 1970s-sort of breed—he plugs away with an unreflective anti-anti-communism.  For Frankel, the Venona intercepts seem never to have been revealed and the archives of the Soviet Union were never opened.  For him, only in conservative fantasy were the communists plotting against America—even the America for which High Noon provides an allegory.  At best, the author believes in moral equivalence: bad as the commies were, the anti-commies were just as bad. Probably worse.

The whole thing reminds me of America today, with the reflexive anti-Trump approach of many Progressives and fellow travelers.  Is President Trump Marshal Will Kane?  Time will tell.

It is sad.  So sad.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff