by Armando Simón
“The irony today is that Americans keep bragging about their land of the free, yet cannot tell a joke, paint their face, whistle at a pretty girl, or even worship an ancestor without losing their careers and livelihoods. PC tyranny rules supreme; media, Hollywood, Big Tech, and academia follow strict orders; and foolish Americans pretend that they’re free.” — Panagiotis “Taki” Theodoracopulos
Recently, I attended a function where The Star-Spangled Banner was sung as usual, and suddenly for the first time, the last stanza hit me like a sledgehammer.
“Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”?
Not anymore.
More like the Land of the Meek and Home of the Scared.
Think I’m exaggerating?
I have little doubt now that America will be altered and destroyed by the Communist (aka “woke”) fanatics that have infiltrated every upper echelon of society and America will collapse without a single shot being fired.
But here let me digress on a peculiarity in America. Whereas in Europe, Communists declare themselves to be such, or “Marxist,” American Communists use a host of euphemisms to cover up their identity: “woke,” “social justice warriors,” “progressives,” “activists,” “anti-fascists,” “liberals,” etc., while some clueless conservatives help them keep up the deception by using those euphemisms instead of calling them for what they are. A number of refugees from Communist regimes keep voicing the alarm, that we are up against Communists, but prominent conservatives apparently think it impolite to voice the Communist label.
But I digressed.
Liberals who have for the past few years have openly called for total censorship (“regulation” of “hate speech”), and have demanded that conservatives be put in gulags and killed, that children should be encouraged to either become homosexual or convinced to be sexually mutilated, and that white people be replaced or exterminated have adopted all the trappings of the usual totalitarian tactics: fraudulent elections, news as propaganda (i.e., fake news), suppression of real news, persecution of heretics, calls for dissidents to be placed in mental institutions, assaults by the paramilitary branch of the Democratic Party (Antifa), indoctrination of the military and schools, insistence on absolute conformity to the ideologies being promulgated, history being falsified, science being mutilated beyond belief, constant attacks on religion, comedy has become severely restricted, films have become propagandistic, and have turned several government agencies into a proto-KGB.
Having both lived in Communist Cuba and studied the history of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Khmer Rouge, all of this is painfully evident, not just to me, but to other refugees of Communism. This is doubly painful to me, as a student of history, not only on an emotional level because America is my adoptive country, but also because I recognize the importance of the American experiment on Western Civilization.
As this is progressing, most of the Republican politicians, with the exception of a vocal handful, are as usual either unconcerned or meek, enabling and submissive, while their constituents keep waiting, hoping, that they will do something, anything.
But what about the citizens themselves?
Well, by now, the mantra “violence doesn’t solve anything” has been thoroughly internalized by Americans, which has led to a nation of sheep who are being repeatedly victimized. The typical conservative keeps hoping that someone will do something.
Someone other than themselves, of course.
They keep waiting for a savior.
Like Trump.
Or DeSantis.
Or even Jesus.
Back when men were men—in other words, when “toxic masculinity” was normal—this submissiveness would have been unimaginable. Intolerable. Men would not have waited for others to tell them what they should do. They would have acted. Those men, in today’s world, would have stormed the citadels of the Communists and emerged with the heads of Sorors, Mayorkas, Chuck Todd, Joy Behar, Garland, Schiff, etc. on pikes. They would have burned CNN, SPLC, New York Times, CBS, Washington Post, ADL to the ground. They would have taken up guns after the fraudulent election—as happened once before, long ago. They would have swarmed over school board meetings and put those members in the ICU. They would have entered the schools to find the teachers encouraging their children to become homosexuals and would have dragged them out and taught them how to brush their teeth with a brick, homosexuals who rotate their crotch in front of children would have been turned into grape jelly. They would have met the hordes of illegal aliens at the border with a fusillade. Scientists and scholars would have seized the fanatics in their midst and forcefully defenestrated them from their office windows. Parishioners whose pastors have turned churches into drag queen shows would have forcefully reclaimed those churches and expelled the satanic desecrators.
That was a time when boys and men would regularly get into fistfights—and think nothing of it.
Instead, what do we see?
Cowards.
This from Jesse Kelly: “People don’t understand why such a tiny portion of society has such an outsized voice today. It’s not complicated. They’re more committed to their religion than you are to yours. They’re interested in victory and domination. You’d like to win, but only if you can look polite.” And from John Cardillo: “They stole our fucking votes, installed an old man with dementia as the puppet for a Marxist regime, have savages rioting and looting in the streets, locked you down and destroyed your life, yet far too many on our side still want to be polite and compromise with these derelicts.”
If you are a man who finds all of the above too crude and distasteful, it is indicative of how much of a mangina you have become.
Children are being encouraged to become homosexuals or transgenders in schools and the only thing parents do is whine and complain. Their children are also being taught that being white is evil and disgraceful and white children should be victimized by others and parents just complain to the school boards or teachers, all of whom see them, and treat them, with contempt. A horde of illegal aliens are engaging in an invasion on the border with a Marxist administration encouraging them onward and Americans just shake their head in disapproval. Hordes of black criminals ransack a store and the employees just stand around, afraid to get involved—because the offenders are black. Professional comedians are told not to joke about certain topics—and they submit. The supposedly tough New Yorkers are reliving the Kitty Genovese shame all over again and again and again. In universities, professors who state facts are told to resign by the Communist administrators—so they do. In those same universities, conservative college students have their displays overturned by leftist hysterics—and just stand there quivering and sniveling. Second Amendment gun nuts strut around and claim their guns prevent tyranny—and don’t use them.
The Democrats used the Covid panic as an excuse to put everyone under house arrest in many parts of the country (and other countries like Canada, Ireland, the UK, Italy, Australia), impose censorship on dissenting medical treatment and advice, ruin the livelihoods of many persons who had a small business and, in the end, there was no revolution, no retribution of any kind.
The next time I hear the last stanza of The Star-Spangled Banner I will try to control myself and not shed a tear.
First published in Italian translation here.
Armando Simón is a retired psychologist, author of Very Peculiar Stories and The Cult of Suicide and Other Sci-Fi Stories.
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13 Responses
The problem we are having is the same one that humans have with parasitic infections; we cannot destroy our enemies without going against our national traditions. The wokies hide behind our Constitution and Bill of Rights; they have taken them hostage. We haven’t yet found the thread which when pulled will disassemble them.
I stopped reading your article when I finished this miserable paragraph.
–I have little doubt now that America will be altered and destroyed by the Communist (aka “woke”) fanatics that have infiltrated every upper echelon of society and America will collapse without a single shot being fired.–
Why did I stop reading your article? Because you have no hope, and you say you have no hope. I suppose the author’s purpose is to convince the reader that they also should lose hope?
Not going to happen.
What would be the value to a reader who retains hope to suffer through reading this bitterly angry article justifying loss of hope? What could be the value of doing so? What is the purpose of the author, to spread hopelessness? This is the author’s mission: to spread hopelessness, bitterness, recriminations, and despair?
Why would any author who claims to be interested in such things as freedom and decency wish to spread despair and hopelessness? Yech.
I have no interest in such an approach or attitude. When good people become hopeless, the bad people ALWAYS win. That is why, regardless of all the bad news (so thoughtfully listed out by this author) that we see daily and often by the hour – we retain as positive an attitude as is possible hoping and working toward the days when things are better and the bad people are stopped and held to account.
Your hopelessness is not good for anybody. Hopeless is never good.
Try to get your hope back. In the meantime, I’ll not waste any precious time reading writers who indulge in such bitter anger, frustration, and despair. That is, once I read the paragraph in which you identified yourself as a hopeless person, you lost this reader (and likely others).
Here’s one thing worthy of hopefulness: Trump 2024!
Hannah Arendt had a brilliant observation: that hope is self-defeating, an opium. Hope is that something, somehow, will magically appear over the horizon that will come and correct a bad situation. So there is no need to do anything.
The more rational alternative is to ACT.
https://aeon.co/essays/for-arendt-hope-in-dark-times-is-no-match-for-action
Mr author,
You cannot have it both ways.
Hope is for people who do not act, so you say, or suggest that hannah arendt said. In truth people who have no hope do not act. Action is motivated by hope not the other way around.
So yours is a confused message here.
It sounds like you’re saying that it’s best to be hopeless so that one can then act.
Sounds like b/s.
It’s an interesting yet bizarre exercise to agitate for the loss of hope then spin hopelessness as a positive good.
Your confusion on this matter is entertaining though unhelpful in the overall picture of national crisis. After all, so you say, being hopeless is a good thing.
It’s a ridiculous overwrought absurd argument that you make.
Our national tradition began in the 1770’s with armed violent revolt against coercive autocracy.
We are risk-reluctant, inadequately organized, under-funded, apathetic, cripplelingly comfortable, and absent fire-breathing competent leadership.
The histories of Bolsheviks vs. Mensheviks, Chinese Communists vs. Nationalists, should have taught us the penalty for violating the Law of Sloths.
Our children will pay for our mediocrity
As noted above, hope implies dependency,
However, in a realm above hope, is faith. Faith is a certainty that whatever occurs, is or will be, beneficial.
We are living through an Age of Greed and Stupid. We will emerge bruised, better, and more lucid. And stupid in more creative, less harmful ways.
I agree with NER reader, this is a very very bitter piece and is no way to point to a peaceful future.
I too am against communism as an ideology but we have to admit that SOME good things came out of it. Just as we have to admit that SOME good came out of the colonial system.
Millions were released from serfdom and unbelievably cruel regimes.
Governments were forced to take social responsibility for the ones dealt a lousy hand and were pushed to provide basic health services.
The fact that a bunch of nutcase ideological incompetents gained the power to run the system shouldn’t make us blind to some of the benefits. Benefits which if modified with personal responsibilities could make us a much more cooperative society.
The purpose of a party in opposition is to come up with alternatives, just because they’re from the opposition doesn’t make all of their ideas bad ones.
To Corden: Obviously, you know little about history. The Communists did not abolish serfdom, Czar Alexander II abolished it. The Communists re-established serfdom, through collective farms, and, outright slavery through the gulag (read Kolyma Tales by Shalamov, The Cutter by Suarez, and books on the Holodomor). These were written by people who experienced Marxism firsthand, not by coddled intellectuals in the West besotted by sophistry. Educate yourself before talking about the subject.
In regards to “unbelievably cruel regimes” that the Communists liberated the population from, you have it totally backwards; no matter how bad the monarchies or dictatorships were, the totalitarianism imposed by the Communists was exponentially worse (read The Gulag Archipelago, Life and Death in Shanghai, First They Killed My Father, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, This Has Been a Kim Jong-Il Production, The Great Terror, The Master of Confessions). These were written by people who experienced Marxism firsthand, not by coddled intellectuals in the West besotted by sophistry. Educate yourself before talking about the subject.
“shouldn’t make us blind to some of the benefits.” Which benefits? Starvation? Constant propaganda? Indoctrination? Being spied on? Forced labor by schoolchildren to pick crops in collective farms? Being tortured? Having friends and relatives disappeared? Keeping silent about crimes being committed? Not being able to express oneself? Not having decent clothes? Not having decent entertainment? Watching the Marxist aristocracy hog all the food and goods? Please enlighten us as to these benefits.
Educate yourself before talking about the subject.
What a nasty piece of work!
Let me tell you professor!
I grew up in poverty in the slums of Liverpool, my family constantly in the shadow of hunger and deprivation, the entire system based on the exploitation and subjugation of the working class by the aristocracy .
I know first hand what the benefits of some socialist programs were, the one benefitting me most being universal education.
If you’d bothered to read my disclaimer I stated that I was against communism as an ideology but you seem so overcome with hate that you’re as bad as your woke.
opposites.
As for reading history, I’ve probably read more about revolutionary history than most people who claim to be educated, so I think I can dismiss your claims of sophistry.
Retired college professors have no greater insights than the well-read from the great unwashed.
The Czar only ended serfdom because of the unrelenting pressure from the population for reform after Austria and other German states had done away with the system.
If you run for president, guess who won’t be voting for you😇
Let me turn that right around to you. You grew up in the slums of Liverpool. So what? (I lived in Hell’s Kitchen in New York when I first came over) What’s that got to do with the topic at hand otherwise than fishing for pity?
My anger, or “nasty piece of work” is due to having lived in Communism—the topic at hand—and I won’t bore you with the deprivations that I, my family, my friends, and my country went through. No, I am not fishing for pity. I am simply pointing out that my (over?) reaction is due to personal experience regarding Communism, although it may also be the fact that Cubans are born with a sharp tongue, which they use at the drop of a hat.
I instantly react to variations of the argument “Communism is a benevolent system which was corrupted” or, “Communism is an equalitarian system which has not been properly implemented” spoken by people (other than yourself, I presume) who imply that if we only make them supreme ruler with unlimited power to kill as many people as he’d like, then we would have utopia. I have heard these arguments too many times by coddled intellectuals full of sophistry. As a frenchman once wrote, “Marxism is the opium of the intellectual.”
We could argue endlessly about Alexander II’s reason for abolishing serfdom, if it was due to cynical self-interest or actual benevolence (which for some reason, leftists seem to think they have a monopoly on). The point was that it was the Czar who did away with serfdom, not the Bolsheviks as you stated.
When you mention you have read a lot of revolutionary history, I would be very interested in knowing which ones, not to argue, but to see which I may have overlooked. However, I deeply suspect that you may not have read any of the tomes I mentioned (true? false?). If so, I would urge you to do so. If you are openminded, of course, as I detect you are.
I am also intensely interested in your statement “the entire system based on the exploitation and subjugation of the working class by the aristocracy.” No, I am not asking in order to argue, though I love to argue, but in order to learn, how that is/was true in the 20th/21st century. I know that there is a lot of resentment in Britain of the aristocracy dating back over a century, but I would be extremely curious as to the specifics, the personal, not generalities. Again, not to argue, but for enlightenment. Unlike liberals, I am open minded and intensely interested in all points of view.
Armando, this isn’t the forum for such a complex subject but just to answer some of your questions and perhaps interest the readers, here’s just a few of the books I have read:
“The French Revolution” Thomas Carlyle
“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” Edward Gibbon
“Stalin, Breaker of Nations” Robert Conquest
“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” William Safire.. one of the fairest books I’ve ever read
“Modern Ireland” R.F. Foster
“Freedom at Midnight”. La Pierre about India’s Independence
“America” Alistair Cooke.
“The Dark Defile” history of Afghanistan by Diana Preston
“The Meeting at Potsdam” Charles Mee
and, the one that made me howl with laughter,
“Adolph Hitler, my part in his downfall” by Spike Milligan
There’s many more, of course, but these are the ones that stick out.
It may surprise you to learn that I have read “The Gulag” and “Life and Death in Shanghai” (I’ve actually visited Shanghai), but they are books of such unremitting misery that they took me back, some way, to my own upbringing. I have great difficulty with Russian books in general ‘cos they always come across as non-stop whining and the names are indecipherable.
The resentment of aristocracy in the UK is built on the class system and the remnants of the feudal landowner system, where upper class twits and their heirs and successors still own vast acreages.
Longleat, for example, owned by Lord Bath, is 10 times the size of our own Stanley Park here in Vancouver. That’s ten thousand acres– where the peasants had to tug their forelocks at the sight of his Lordship. Even in 1960s Britain, there were places that the working class just wouldn’t dare go in!
It’s at its most virulent in the northern industrial towns (or what used to be industrial towns, they’ve all been hollowed out) and comes from the privileges they gave themselves– ownership of all the fish, fowl and wildlife, confiscation of the crops. Punishments included maiming, death, or deportation for minor offences and compulsory enlistment for military escapades.
As if that wasn’t enough, they had the right of Droit de Seigneur which gave them the right to screw your intended before you got the chance to.
Resentments like that don’t wash away in one or two generations, they are epigenetic.
You and I are generally on the same page ( I’ve read most of your essays in this magazine) but I think maybe I’m a little more inclined to accept that some ideas are good no matter what side they come from😊.
As for correcting the current “woke” infestation it’s like the underground filaments of a mushroom, spread further than we can imagine. Maybe your solution is the only way.. deracination?
You should, if you haven’t already, watch the movie “The Death of Stalin” which perfectly satirizes the personalities of the incompetents who end up running these countries. It is just hilarious.
To close, I’d like to say I’ve visited Hell’s Kitchen too. Even in its worst days, it was like Disneyland compared to our neighborhood😋
All I can say to all that is that I did not learn:
1. How Communism helped the poor of Liverpool, unless by communism we now mean some social welfare programs of a kind that have been instituted by rather many forms of government in Europe and elsewhere who did not call themselves communist, who I would not call communist, and who often as not were disparaged by communists. Remember, the communists long called the German Social Democrats the social fascists. I do not concede to them praise for things not done by them. Was this a situation of communists dominating municipal government in Liverpool? In that case, kudos to them for operating within the liberal democratic electoral system of a country not nationally government by communists. A thing that both historically and in their own time would get them booted out of party meetings unless they had specific orders to act that way.
2. How old one has to be for the urban conditions of Liverpool to be described as oppression of the workers by the ‘aristocracy’. Unless by a pretty broad definition, the aristocracy has not had that much exclusive power for quite some time.
Plus, alas, anyone who acts as the author suggests, or much much more gingerly at that, will just be branded a Nazi Racist Transphobic Homophobe Genocidal Anti-semite no matter what the specific situation, and will be condemned by all without limit.
He will not even inspire others, save to equal futility, and not many at that. He will not even be a hero in retrospect. He will not change the narrative in any way. In fact he will reinforce the narrative of his enemies. He will be the living definition of counterproductive.
It is too late. For the author’s course of action. For blind faith that one or a handful of elections will turn things around. The battles were fought in university classrooms and lost without most people even noticing them, at the absolute latest 30 years ago. And that’s the absolute latest- at the university level it had started long before. And it was in the elementary and high schools by then, and in the pop culture.
Just one anecdotal point- in one early episode of Roseanne, not especially a left wing sitcom but not otherwise either, younger daughter comes home all fired up with the Howard Zinn version of American history. Already a routine element of education, buried in the minds of some scriptwriter, able to get to production and airing without comment.
It is too late. While I’m not without sympathy, way, way too much time and effort in the 90s was wasted on going for the maximalist position on abortion, funnelling money to TV preachers who all inevitably turned out to be thieves and charlatans, chasing Bill Clinton for merely chasing enthusiastically consenting skirt [most of the cases] or actual sexual assault [Kathleen Willey, probably] as if the former would really change anything important or the latter would find honest support on the left, which does not care about women unless paid up members of the cause, if even then [not even the left’s women care about women except for specific purposes]. Or the GOP ragging on about taxes and spending while doing nothing real about them, thus showing themselves incompetents and hypocrites. Or the GOP ragging on about congressional corruption while doing all the same things. And, for that matter, chasing skirt.
All the things then that were mere “culture war” issues, marginalized to the back pages of a handful of magazines and the very occasional nod from a GOP politician, were the real battles. The ones to control the mental high ground of the entire societal battlespace, so to speak. And the ones to control the minds of the next generation.
All lost, almost unfought, long ago.