Mamaliga with sourcream |
To understand where I come from, you must walk in the shoes
of women and children under the communist regime where I grew up, women with children
in tow who had to stand in line every day at an early age if they wanted to buy
bread and basics. Moms sent their children to stand in the bread and milk
lines, and they stood in the meat and fresh vegetable lines and canned veggies
in winter. Fresh was a stretch even in summer time, we had to contend with
wilted seasonal spinach, green beans, and peas and shriveled potatoes and
apples. Meat meant choice cuts of fat attached to bones with which mom used to
make soup. Refrigerators were rare and expensive and freezers did not exist for
us, window sills doubled as such in winter time. Crows loved our storage
system.
We ate well when grandpa dropped by and brought us a chicken,
a pat of butter, and a quarter of a gallon of milk from his country “farm”
where he raised rabbits, chicken, a sheep, a pig, and a cow. His farm consisted
of a small barn and enough land to have a garden and space to grow some rows of
corn.
The communist cooperative grew wheat and the crop was split
among the villagers who toiled in the fields each day after the communist party
received its demanded quota. It was almost like paying the mafia. After the
communist party (the mafia) confiscated their lands for “the good of the
people,” these former landowners had to work the land, put in the crop, harvest
it, really backbreaking manual labor, and then pay the lion’s share to the land
confiscator, the communist party. What a deal!
How can anyone be interested in fancy cooking when
ingredients were impossible to find, when we lived from day to day on most
basic foodstuff after we stood in endless lines daily?
Can spoiled Americans understand how it feels to enter a
grocery store and see rows after rows of empty shelves? Can they imagine real
lines for food extending sometimes for a mile, winding around the block and the
entire neighborhood?
Can they imagine the fist and tug-of-war battles for a
merchandise deal they see on Black Friday magnified to the point of exhaustion?
If fat Americans give each other black eyes and bruises over a television set,
an electronic game, or other silly gadget in order to save a few bucks while
claiming that they are exploited, marginalized, poor, and downtrodden by
non-existent “white privilege,” how would they react when faced with severe
shortages of food and water? Unbelievably, the next day after they give thanks
for what they already have, they pull each other’s hair out fighting for a TV
that was probably cheaper a few days earlier.
Normally people fought for the five salamis hanging in the deli
window, or a hundred bottles of cooking oil, or a few pallets of sugar and
flour, that day’s delivery to the store. Even with rationing coupons, there was
never enough food or necessities because planning was centralized, not based on
free market supply and demand, it was based on five-year plans crafted and decided
by uneducated communist bureaucrats who had no idea what they were doing nor
did they care as long as they had their own grocery stores, department stores,
doctors, clinics, pharmacies, and hospitals.
It was a privilege to find some food with shorter lines around
Christmas time when the communist government supplied more pallets to grocery
stores in order to pacify the stupid masses and to continue the real
exploitation of the proletariat by the elites who pretended to be taking care
of them, to be shielding them from the “evil” capitalists.
We were thin from lack of food, but we were not healthy.
Pharmacy shelves were empty too, even vitamins and cotton balls were hard to
find. There was a thriving black market at ten times the price that most people
could not afford on the government-dictated meager salaries. Equality was
painful, miserable, and stomach growling and churning.
I am hearing this tune again from bratty liberal kids who
demand social justice and equality. P.J.
O’Rourke called them “spoiled, miserable, unsatisfied, demanding,
ill-disciplined, despotic, and useless.” Somehow, in an alternate universe,
these “sniveling brats” blame capitalism for the generational welfare that fat
and comparatively well-off Americans accept and demand from the Democrat Party
that keeps them “poor.” Personal responsibility is an alien concept to most who
are accustomed to being taken care off by taxpayers’ generosity.
Poverty is a relative term and most people ill-define or misunderstand
poverty. According to the World Bank, almost 600 million citizens of the globe
make less than $2 a day. Are you poor compared to them?
When people tell me how rewarding it is to cook fancy meals
for their families, I just see spoiled individuals who have so much to be
thankful for but have no idea how lucky they are to be given so many choices by
a free market system promoted by capitalism, not by the socialist egalitarian
non-sense.
Americans don’t understand the concept of the starving goose
of socialism who was kept pacified and faithful by feeding her one kernel a day,
just enough to prevent starvation. This way, she always knew who her masters
were and was kept under control, no leash necessary, just a barbed wired fence
to keep geese from escaping.
Unfortunately, most people here don't realize that a large number of their leaders are moving us in that direction; either intentionally or because they are dumb or they are naive. Whatever the reason, the result is the same, but it doesn't have to be. Also, unfortunately, when we point that out to people they think we are nut cases and it can't possibly happen here. They don't realize that all of the people in that situation were once better off and wouldn't believe that this could happen to them.
ReplyDeleteIt needn't happen. Somehow people need to be awakened. Liberty demands eternal vigilance. We are losing.
I agree, Paul.
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