Thank you for a very thoughtful reply. Sounds like your grandfather was quite a guy, and by extension, your grandmother as well (Behind every great man ...).
Remember, my quote was from a book. Comparing the quote to your comment I can’t keep from wondering if the great distance (in 1890) from southern Ukraine to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and Moscow helped your family to prosper.
In the U.S. today people still prosper even though the left now controls all three branches of government. Give them time, they’ll ruin it. And the left also has control over most of the media, universities, schools by and large, big tech, and the entertainment industry.
The one part of the quote about considering the peasants to be little better than animals hits home to me. They call us “Deplorables”, “Nazis”, “White Supremacists”, etc., when most of us want liberty, freedom, and equality. The thing is, the lies are repeated so often by the media that many people actually believe them (Goebbels was right.) Some on the left, usually Hollywood types, want to send us to “re-education” camps. And many on the left want to financially ruin anyone who doesn’t fall in step with them.
The left is immensely powerful and their totalitarian tendencies are on the rise.
“The left is immensely powerful and their totalitarian tendencies are on the rise.”
I disagree that their totalitarian tendencies are “on the rise.”
Why? Because power is like money - neither actually changes you when you get it (or have a serious prospect of getting it soon), they merely REVEAL who it is that you really have been all along. It is when you DON’T need others that the mask (if you’ve been wearing it) falls, not when you’re in need of the approval (in some fashion or other) of others. You play THEIR game when you need them, your OWN game when you don’t (well, not YOU, personally - he generic “You”).
I heard this a long time ago and never forgot it (though I did forget who said it): “Inside every Democrat is a fascist fighting to get out.” The more time that goes by, the more correct that statement has turned out to be.