On
a regular schedule, the Marxist community and street organizers would show up
and corral everybody to a day of volunteer work, sweeping the streets, picking
up trash, mowing the grass, planting trees, shrubs, pick up garbage, rocks, and
pull weeds. Adults would work quietly, fearful of saying something that would
be reported downtown, but the kids laughed and ran carefree in their exuberant playfulness.
The
hill where I used to run sleds in wintertime was now occupied by 9-story
apartment buildings, so clustered together that one could touch a neighbor’s
hand in the other building through the bedroom window.
Near
the stairs leading to another housing project below, there was a patch of
heaven where I ran my sleigh many winters ago, laughing, falling, and rolling
in the snow. It was now strangely covered in asphalt on a 30 degree incline.
I
walked down trying to retrace my steps but I froze at the bottom of the hill. A
large pack of street dogs was approaching, barking and growling. I went uphill
quickly, regretful that I could not continue my exploration. The street below,
with 40 or so homes still standing, was familiar – three of my school mates
lived there with their families. I was surprised that these homes had not been
demolished to make room for more high-rise ugly concrete block apartments.
Utilizing every inch of space to the max was a primary goal of city planners.
My
former home, a tiny match box sized apartment on the fifth floor, still painted
the same dirty sea foam green, was oozing decay and pollution stains. Nothing
has changed since 1977 when an earthquake damaged many buildings but somehow
left ours with cracks and a bathroom window dangling chunks of concrete from
the reinforced steel bars, like a loose tooth.
That was my family’s bathroom window. The concrete bar was still missing
and the window looked odd. Why fix it,
nobody was going to climb to the fifth floor and invade the home through the
gaping hole in the bathroom. The only addition to the old building was a
security entry at the main door. All apartments had been bought for $30,000
each by the former communist era tenants who used to pay subsidized rent to the
Communist Party.
The
sidewalk was cracked, leading to the shopping center where we bought our milk, bread,
bones with meat on them, wilted vegetables, and the few groceries available for
which we stood in line a few hours every day. I was shocked that the building
still stood. Half of it was abandoned in a pitiful state of decay; the other
half did not fare much better but it was occupied. A lone, dingy grocery store
sold a little bit of everything - the shelves were full of food and merchandise.
I don’t know why but tears welled up in my eyes. I remembered the empty, clean
shelves of my childhood, the pharmacy, the bakery, the dairy, the “cofetaria”
selling sweets, the book store, and the pub always full of people who were
trying to drown their sorrow in beer and plum brandy. They were long gone. The
young shopkeeper ignored me after a cursory look at the middle-aged woman in
front of him.
My
old elementary school was still behind the shopping center, surrounded by the
same fence and locked gates. It was freshly painted a happy yellow. The educationally-themed
mosaic created by a commie artist on the left hand side of the building was
still intact. It showed mother education as a goddess of communist learning holding
a book adorned with a hammer and sickle.
I
will never forget the misery and torture the dictator Ceausescu had subjected my
people to during his reign of socialist/communist terror. Some individuals have
short memories though, especially those who try to excuse the horrible
treatment of a nation as a “fatherly,” well-intentioned attempt to rid the
country of the national debt to the west.
A
professor who used to be the communist party secretary to the university system
during Nicolae Ceausescu tried recently to blame Ceausescu’s demise on his
announcement in 1989 that Romania had paid off all its debts to the west; additionally,
Ceausescu allegedly forbade the Romanian government to seek any foreign credit.
In other words, Romania had become such a threat to the one world government
bankers and their ill-gotten interest-based fortunes that they were able to get
rid of Ceausescu and “punish him physically for his insolence.” Perhaps this
professor forgot that Ceausescu did not consult the Romanian people if they
were willing to suffer so much hunger, cold, poverty, neglect, misery, torture so
that Romania would owe no money to the west. He also forgot the brutal abuse,
imprisonment, and swift punishment citizens suffered if they dared to criticize
the communist party.
This professor’s national debt explanation makes for an interesting conspiratorial theory. The powerful western bankers cowed by a “maverick” defiant dictator who stood in their way to control the world financially. God forbid Ceausescu’s move would be copied by other dictators and turn into a contagion around the globe, robbing the bankers of their fortunes acquired by shameless interest charged to poor countries. Did someone force his hand to sign on the dotted line? Did the dictator with an elementary school education not become a wealthy billionaire from these loans, and lived a life of luxury while his people starved? Did I miss something here?
Communism
did not die behind the Iron Curtain in 1989 – it re-emerged in a more nefarious
form around the globe, promoted by the compliant media and hypocritical
Hollywood. McCarthy was right about some of them after all.
The
has-beens of the old communism and total government control are nostalgic for
the good ole days of totalitarianism, romanticizing the past, trying to reclaim
their positions of power and privilege. The global communism of U.N. Agenda 21
is making great stride, using environmentalism, land preservation, zoning, and
care for the planet as a tool. And the Fabian socialists in the west are winning
the hearts and minds of low information voters who believe anything they are
told over and over by the main stream media.
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