Posted on 05/16/2013 12:24:35 PM PDT by Olog-hai
I visited the Soviet Union twice back in the eighties. Fascinating place. … And, because I was on cultural exchanges, I met brilliant people like Yevgeny Yevtushenko and a dozen or so other well known Soviet writers and filmmakers. Funnily enough, most of them would eventually take me aside and ask me if I could help them get out of there. I couldn’t, unfortunately, but I could well understand why they wanted to leave. At the end of both of my trips of about two weeks each, I desperately wanted to get the Hell out myself. I hated the place.
The Soviet Union was like one giant jail. You had no privacy. You had no life. KGB minders followed you everywhere—even, in my case, straight into the lobby men’s room of Moscow’s Cosmos Hotel to watch me tinkle. …
Sound familiar? I’ve been thinking about it a lot these days because what with the IRS evidently watching our every move and the Associated Press and who knows who else under surveillance, I feel quite literally like I’m back in the USSR. And I haven’t even left home. …
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Relax comrade...
Government control of you is for the greater good, after all.
I mean, without it, those evil conservatives might do something evil like save babies, create wealth, and restore liberty, or sumpin’...
The last two years living in the Soviet Union, I would often comment that they were becoming more free, while we were becoming more Soviet. And I was pretty much referring to the media at the time.
Now, our media is way beyond anything Pravda or Usvestia ever dreamed of becoming. I don’t think even Stalin or Hitler had such a boot licking following.
bttt
They didn't. Hitler fired Julius Streicher very early from any government position because he was so extreme that even Adolph himself could stomach him. Streicher tried to use this fact in his defense at Nuremberg, but he was ordered to dance the Tyburn Jig anyway because his writing was so central to the formation of Nazi attitudes which led to their crimes against humanity.
Pravda was also famous for actually criticizing the Politburo once in awhile.
If you think its bad now leave Ostumbles in office for 3.5 more years.
When Pravda criticized the Politburo, was it on behalf of the Supreme Soviet?
Will Obamacare soon require everyone to have a cellphone as part of their "insurance" coverage? Ostensibly to help first responders locate us in case of emergency, but in reality to keep track of us.
Am I turning into a tin-foil hatter?
Given that a law that forces people to buy health insurance sailed through Congress, I would say the sky’s the limit here as far as how abusive government can get.
Our President grew up admiring the Soviets.
One thing they were excellent at was disinformation and propaganda.
I went to school in France with many young hip Germans. They got special pamphlets in the mail all the time that was the “true” news, better than mainstream, to them. They felt about these pamphlets the way I feel about FR now. They were written by people with German names, in a young, cool style, very counter culture to the parents’ staid capitalist German society. The overall basics my friends got from these tracts: communism has its problems, but it is better than capitalism. Superpowers are not great, but the USSR is far more benign than the USA.
I used to tell them that all that stuff was written by the Russians. They laughed at me and showed me the German writer names. Yeah, real hard to do with the DDR. I was of course vindicated. But maybe our pal Obama and his black Muslim influences early in life didn’t understand the communist Russia control of the black - and other- Muslim movement in the last 50 years. Or maybe he knows and approves.
The leisure classes of government are just making sure the working class does not revolt.
They are just massaging the goose that lays the golden egg.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.