[This is a guest post by Tacitus]
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There was one small problem. Oh, one hardly worth mentioning. It was all a crock and on some level everyone inside the Eastern Bloc knew it.
It took a million small taps of the persistent hammer of History to bring down the largest and most self important empire the world has ever seen. A tired worker standing in line, cheap shoes making his toes cramped and wet, sees a sleek black ZIL limo flash by. With an imperceptible shake of the head another small bit of faith is chipped away. With an inward sigh the worker goes back to his long wait for something only half way shoddy. That is to say, made in East Germany.
In 1989 someone in the Hungarian border police just said, “Eh, screw it”. They stopped trying to keep people from crossing over into Austria. The geriatric Central Committee droned on as usual, and tractor production figures still dominated the news. But oddly no consequences were forthcoming. And in a stunning display of how Immigration Policy Matters, it set of a cascade of disillusioned people saying in many different languages, “Eh, screw it”. Soon the Berlin Wall was being reduced to rubble by the persistent hammer of history and the less abstract hammers wielded by fed up people.
We might be in a similar situation today. Everyone knows that that Equity, Economic Recovery and so much more are inevitable, right around the corner. Our versions of Tass and Pravda assure us of this. The current Central Committee is every bit as sclerotic as their 1980’s soul mates but don’t go in much for statues. Still, they have their own icons looking down across public spaces from murals.
I suppose we should make allowances. A certain percentage of people answering surveys are intentionally messing with their earnest or venal inquisitors. Another percentage, rather small in my opinion, are sincere people who have just not thought things through. But honestly, hardly anyone really Believes you can borrow and spend forever. Or that it makes sense to allow biological males to win medals in Girl’s Sports. Or that the current CRT nonsense is anything more than a veneer of pop morality spread thin over a reparations grift.
Maybe Gerald Ford was not surprised by the Hungarian border guards. Everyone else sure was. And who knows what the equivalent trivial event in our times will be?
8 comments:
History never travels in a straight line. Too many people take recent current events and graph them out to infinity.
I've had the thought the the answer to the 'long march through institutions' is the 'long counter attack'. For several years I think I've been seeing that counter attack in action.
No pasarán
Excellent post, and yes, it does come down to persistence.
We won't be waiting 70 effing years to pull down the statues of Marx and Lenin, we may not even wait 70 weeks, and come the day, will will be rather more vigorous in opposition to the regime than a bunch of vodka-addled and pacified Slavs were.
The regime minions also will not slide into graduate teaching positions in Frisco once the jig is up.
They should instead expect a good, hearty Ceacescuing, against the nearest handy walls, in all cases.
Mercy will be left to the Afterlife.
They should write this on their hands in Sharpie, lest they forget.
We shall see Aesop, we shall see.
The Soviet Union was a criminal establishment held up by Party, Army and Secret Police. Each collaborated with the other two to keep the third in line. The traitor Milley stated Trump's coup could not happen without a similar triumvirate -- military, CIA and FBI. Milley's statements, if true, represent the first time in modern memory that the US military planned to intervene in presidential politics. He must go. Can Biden trust his chief general?
a bit of truth goes a long way.
I do like the Tennyson quote.
Let us have some perspective. Those geriatric geezers took a backward, beaten down economic basket case of a country, and turned it into a super power that put the boots to nazi Germany and gave Americans nightmares for 50 years. Today America buys its rocket engines from Russia because they run at higher temps and pressures. The old breed set the stage for everything Russia is today.
To be quite honest, I admire the way Russia handles its freaks, perverts, and degenerates. We’d better learn to do the same or they will bring the roof down on us.
I had the opportunity to go to Hungary in 1990, after the collapse of Communism. It was very odd, the effective bloomings of "freedom" amidst the trappings of a very different system. As a "gift", we were given the small red books all good young Communists would have received because they were literally useless except as tourist items.
Much like the Warsaw Pact, the more the elite and those that support them plug their ears and listen to their own theories and echo chambers called the media, the more surprised by things they will be when they change.
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