Now we say “Ukraine”, not “The Ukraine”. Now we say Kyiv not Kiev – Ukrainian spelling vs. Russian spelling of the capital. But what’s happening today may not be exactly what Mussorgsky had in mind when he composed his Pictures at an Exhibition – the Great Gate at Kiev.
As it has been said, things go in cycles and tend to repeat. As Santayana the great Spanish American philosopher told us, to paraphrase: those who do not learn from history are damned to repeat it. I like the word “damned” – he did not use the word. My favorite Santayana quote is: History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there”. I digress. Today, we have American Oligarchs and Monopolists like Jeff Bezos – daily spouting propaganda from his Washington Post – while simultaneously unfairly competing against American small businesses (Amazon is easily China’s #1 American retailer backed by serfs and slave labor) – highly reminiscent of the Globalist Utopians who backed Stalin as well as monopolists and Oligarchs who thrive today in the Age of Big Tech and Big Media. Stalin sycophant and reporter for the NY Times was a man by the name of Walter Duranty’s. His editor Oswald Garrison Villard at the NY Times was cheer leading for Russia’s Communist policies while Stalin was busy destroying “The Ukraine”. Villard, in a 1929 article called “Russia from a Car Window,” could hardly contain himself in his endorsement, despite speaking no Russian and never having met a Russian peasant: “This, I repeat, is the most stupendous governmental feat ever undertaken—the social, moral, political, industrial, economic emancipation of a people and its reorganization upon the basis of service to the society and to the nation, with the profit-making motive suddenly removed from the individual.”1
As evidenced by the NY Times downplaying the Holocaust in the 1940s and propping up Stalin the 1930s, propaganda and lying from the “Free Press” in America is not new. Today, we live in an age where Freedom of Speech is being stifled in large part by so-called journalist/propagandists who make their living working for Big Media and now Big Tech. In the early 1930s the former Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin were putting the screws to their “bread basket” known as The Ukraine. You see, just another possession of the great and soon to be former Soviet empire. Stalin had his own “Truth” and propagandists at Pravda, but perhaps his greatest ally was a soon to be NY Times Pulitzer Prize winning “journalist” Walter Duranty, who not only failed to report the famines in “The Ukraine”, but was actively promoting Stalin. The death toll has been reported to be as high as 10 million Ukrainians starved to death. You see, take the profit motive out, and the benign tyrants like Stalin or his Mini-Stalin, Putin, will give us Utopia!
Utopia! Well, there is profit for the chosen Oligarchs, but everyone else gets to share – in the misery and the ever-declining standard of living. Yes, here we are again on the precipice of not just a small regional war, but the prospect of another World War – one not just with conventional weapons but with the two Nuclear Super powers leading us to World War III and nuclear holocaust.
Let’s take a look at some of our world leaders and project prospects for peace. Hmmm. In America we have perhaps the most incompetent and senile President we’ve ever had. Half of the country, or more, believes that the 2020 election was not fair and perhaps even fraudulently stolen. In Canada, we have Trudeau, who recently put down a peaceful trucker protest, making many of us believe he was channeling Cuba’s Castro and giving the Globalists a trial run for something we could see in the US and other Western countries – full on suspension of free speech and liberty – using thug tactics that Castro would appreciate. The largest economy in Europe, Germany – is hamstrung – with a failed renewable energy policy that essentially forced their former East German Stasi Chancellor to continue to get most of Germany’s energy from Russia. The new Chancellor also hamstrung, continues this insane policy of depending on Russian natural gas. And let’s not forget that Biden while closing down American fossil fuel production, shutting down drilling and doing away with pipelines, up until recently, got about 3% of America’s oil from Putin’s Russia despite all the talk of “sanctions”. Brandon also removed sanctions on the Russian pipeline. Makes no sense unless you really don’t like your fellow Americans. But that is the point. These rulers don’t give a fig about their people – they only care about the power and money it generates for them and their families. By the way, where is Hunter anyway? How’s that money laundering Art scheme going? I digress again. Doesn’t sound like much but if America and the world stopped buying Russian oil, America and the world’s economies would be reeling from the economic fallout. And of course, they are doing just that. Shooting themselves in the foot. All for optics, none of it actually helpful to the people reeling from the worst inflation in generations.
And of course, we have Mini-me Stalin, Putin, living his dream to reconquer the eastern European satellites lost when the former Soviet Union disbanded after the end of the cold war. So instead of a cold war, we have the prospect of a world war and nuclear annihilation. If we survive this time in history and avoid a nuclear holocaust, we will most likely get another cold war. I’ll take it given the alternative. Let us hope that we also get better leaders. Once upon a time we were led to our first world war with inbred aristocrats. Now we have inbred Oligarchs (Harvard/Yale inbred that is) and massive Groupthink. These people in their arrogance and Marie Antoinette Hubris – not so much “let them eat cake” as let them “take the bus”, let them “wait in bread lines”. No doubt these elites hate the average bible thumping gun toting American. Hell, Obama as much as said so in this comment about those of us “clinging to our guns and religion”. So, what we have as a Ruling Class is senile puppets of China corrupted by US Oligarchs like Bezos; Chinese puppets that have bought and sold America’s Big Tech and Media companies – essentially force feeding us Orwellian “Newspeak” rather than actual honest “journalism”. When the opposition acts, they lock up and censor protesters that speak out against their “regime”, while spewing outlandish propaganda that we would see in Xi’s China or Putin’s Russia. Maybe we need to break up a few monopolies and punish some Oligarchs in America – and not just focus on Russian and Ukrainian Oligarchs. And yes, it is time to really focus on our real existential threat and enemy – Communist China.
1https://www.historyonthenet.com/walter-duranty-new-york-times