“Remember Red
October!”
95 years ago
today, in Eastern Europe, still using the Julian calendar, the Kerensky
Provisional government fell to the Bolsheviks in the Great October
Revolution.
I bring up
this bit of history because I am certain that my neighbors and many other U.S.
citizens are firmly convinced that we have just re-elected a President whom
they are certain is either a communist or a socialist. The collective political acumen in this
region of Tennessee is such that the teavangelist mob is unable to accurately define
either socialism or communism. Lacking
that knowledge however, does not prevent them from demonstrating their lack of
awareness and/or their certainty that the demagogues and dropouts who populate
the Fox News band width are a more reliable and accurate source of political
and historical information than are people who have actually studied political
science and history at levels beyond the directions for preparation on a box of
instant macaroni and cheese. “Just add
paranoia, overheat in microwave while listening to NRA propaganda.”
The GOP/teavangelists,
in the guise of spray-tanned Rep. Boehner , has already thrown down their gauntlet,
announcing that neither compromise nor tax increases will be on their agenda. Not content to have taken the U.S. government
to the edge of financial collapse in previous displays of bigotry and racism
powered refusal to work with a duly elected POTUS; the same asses who
endangered the world economy simply because they dislike the reality of a black
male in the Oval Office, are prepared to behave like petulant children yet
again.
What further aggravates
the situation is the guarantee that there will be still more secretly funded
attempts to negate Obama’s presidency, and that these attempts will be launched
and led by many evangelicals who are convinced that they are the targets of a
war on Christians. No other great power
in the modern world would put up with such direct attacks upon its government
by religious leaders. No other great
power in the modern world would put up with science and math education being undercut
by the fairy tale fallacies of creation myths.
The Russian
Revolution failed eventually. It never achieved
a true form of socialism, and like other governments of 20th century
Europe, it became embroiled in the Great Patriotic War and the Holocaust, It
collapsed under the same forces that destroyed much of Europe. Given the level of industrialization of
Russia in 1917, and the nature of Russian politics under the Romanov empire,
the absolutely amazing thing about the Revolution was its elevation from a
feudalistic agrarian nation into a great power competing in the technical race
for the moon within the span of 50 years.
The Soviet
Union was a political disaster. No
communists or socialists hid under the beds of citizens, only Stalin’s agents
wresting power from the Revolution for Stalin and his follow-ons.
The Obama 2nd
term carries the chance for real improvement in the U.S. He has a Senate majority, will hopefully use
that to appoint two new Supreme Court Justices.
He is well place to remove the teavangelists from White House influence,
removing the Billy Graham camp from access to the government. He has the opportunity to work with the
Pentagon in scaling back our active duty military from a numbers-based
structure to a task/results based force that is not being used to fight oil and
mineral wars for cronies. The
opportunities are immense. He’s learned
during his first term that he can’t play for “being liked by his opponents.” It is therefore time to play the game for the
country rather than for re-election. He
can start by reminding the teavangelist mob that he is neither a socialist nor
a communist. They won’t believe him, won’t
learn from him, but they’ll have been given yet another opportunity to
learn. For this election, that is the
best we could have hoped for.
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