Thursday, March 23, 2023

The Depraved New World and Technocracy

United Nations has become a very powerful organization that yields a lot of power among globalists, including billionaire Americans who give to its causes dear to their hearts. The majority of U.N.’s funding comes from American taxpayers and they are either blissfully ignorant of what the U.N. is doing to our country or are actually supporting the United States’ demise.

The United Nations has been able to impose over the years the globalist Agenda 21/2030 by using the lynchpin Sustainable Development’s 17 goals which read quite innocuous at first glance. But SD is the tool to create a new global economic order after the destruction of U.S. capitalism.

Patrick Wood has written about and discussed technocracy since the 1970s. He published many books and articles on the topic. He has argued for a long time that technocracy dominance and not communism is the true goal of the globalism. He wrote that United Nations established Sustainable Development (SD) as “an outgrowth of historic Technocracy from the 1930s.”

The Green New Deal, U.N. Agenda 21/2030, Smart Cities, Public-Private Partnerships, Regionalism, 15-minute cities, and the Great Reset of the World Economic Forum (WEF) are goals that must be accomplished at all costs. According to Patrick Wood, only then the population of the earth will be “micro-managed by a Scientific Dictatorship.”

The technocracy movement has been around since the 1930s. At the time, Julian Huxley, an English evolutionary biologist and a left-wing internationalist preoccupied with education, was the first director-general in 1946 of the newly created United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). His directorship only lasted two years instead of six. Catholic Americans objected to his idea of controlling population growth with birth control.

Edward Bellamy’s writings and the progressive engineers of the early twentieth century defined the technocracy movement.  The term technocracy was invented in 1919 by William H. Smyth, an engineer from California, “the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers.”

Howard Scott and other writers advocated that “businesspeople were incapable of reforming their industries in the public interest and that control of industry should be given to engineers.” He is considered the founder of the technocracy movement.

Technocracy Inc. proposed in 1938 that “technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population of this continent [from Panama to the North Pole],… as a scientific, technical, and engineering problem.” Goods will be distributed by this technocracy by “means of a certificate of distribution available to every citizen from birth to death.” The various splinter organizations of the technocracy movement did not survive very long in New York and at Columbia.

During this time period, Aldous Huxley, Julian Huxley’s brother, wrote in 1931 and published in 1932 his dystopian novel Brave New World which is set in a World State in 2540 A.D. in the city of London, where citizens are environmentally engineered by science into a social hierarchy based on intelligence. Reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning create a frightening society. Unfortunately some of these imagined developments have come to fruition today, as science is already experimenting with and accomplishing objectionable futuristic goals.

Citizens in Huxley’s Brave New World are born through artificial wombs and children are indoctrinated into predetermined classes based on intelligence and the type of labor they are slated to perform. There are hatchery workers like Lenina Crowne. Citizens are kept calm and in check with a drug called ‘soma.’

Richard Gardner, a member of the Trilateral Commission (a non-governmental organization or NGO), wrote in 1974 an article for Foreign Affairs Magazine entitled “The Hard Road to World Order” in which he predicted the future of the Commission’s self-described New International Economic Order – “an end-run around national sovereignty,” “booming, buzzing confusion,” and building this Economic Order from the “bottom up” instead of an “old-fashioned frontal assault.”

A Trilateral Commission member, which cannot be identified as per its rules, spoke at the New Delhi meeting on March 12, 2023, “Three decades of globalization – defined as integrated, free-market based and deflationary – has been replaced by what will be a multidecade period of globalization defined as fragmented, not-free-market-based but industrial-policy based and structurally inflationary.” This year, 2023, is Year One of this new global order.” Trilateral Commission calls 2023 'Year One' of new world order - Nikkei Asia

In our Depraved New World where everything goes, the virtue signaling insane societal circus forces citizens to buy into the mental delusion and disease of a few men who think that they are women, that they can menstruate, have wombs, have babies, and compete in women’s sports. If we don’t, we are sent to a pariah status by our technocratic State.

The economy is in inflationary and energy shambles, we are invaded by citizens from 200 different nations through our borderless southern and northern crossings, law and order are worse than ever, education and medical care are lacking in this banana republic, and the traditional family and Christianity are heavily under attack. Who is going to save this Republic from implosion? Like the poet Juvenal wrote in his Satires, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Alone and Starved

Vancouver Island
Reality shows today don’t reflect much reality – they are surrounded by Hollywood movie makers in camps and locations not far from civilization and medical help. But one series stands out, Alone, where contestants must brave alone the harshest weather conditions, film their own ordeal, deal with potential health emergencies, wild animals, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, frogs, fish and other animals they must hunt and eat, critters which are infected with parasites, and avoid poisonous mushrooms.

Contestants can and make split-second mistakes in the wild, resulting in injuries that require “tapping out.” When they do tap out, they can use a satellite phone to ask to be rescued by boat, ATV, or helicopter, depending on the area in which that particular season takes place and their specific spot.

The locations are carefully chosen, quite beautiful, but frighteningly brutal to survive in: Patagonia, Mongolia, the Canadian Arctic, Vancouver Island in Canada, etc. Ten contestants are dropped off away from potential contact with each other.  Natural barriers such as large rivers, lakes, mountains, and other rock formations prevent them from reaching the others.

The contestants can choose ten survival items from a list provided, a first aid kit, a satellite phone, medications they were taking previously for a diagnosed illness, heavy camera equipment with battery packs, a go-pro, all weighing in excess of 50 pounds, a sleeping bag, a tarp, boots, heavy jackets, a hat, and the clothes on their backs.

The last one standing of the ten survivalists wins $500,000. It is a life-altering sum for most of them. A few contestants claim that they are not doing it for the money but for the challenge - to see how far they can push their bodies and minds before they are forced by different circumstances to give up.

What are some of the reasons that force contestants to tap out? Injuries such as a deep cut on a hand or leg, loneliness, psychological problems stemming from isolation, starvation due to the inability to catch fish, hunt, or forage any plants, berries, trap or snare animals in the area, extreme cold, inability to make a fire, losing the fire stick, parasites from eating contaminated animal flesh improperly cooked, heart attack, broken lower back, broken limbs, extreme fear of bears, and actually being pulled by the medical team which checks them periodically; if the body mass index (BMI) falls below 17, the point when the human body is in the zone of potential organ failure, the contestant must drop out. Some are sad to leave, some refuse at first, and some cry with regret that they failed their goals.

The most interesting case of the nine-season series was a man who starved himself so severely by eating small amounts of a large cache of smoked fish which he was saving in order to last the longest number of days thus being the winner. Sadly, his BMI was too far gone, and he was rushed to the hospital. He described how he could not digest any food for three months following his forced extraction. He left behind a cache of 17 smoked fish fillets.

One young woman was in agonizing pain and fever, having failed to have a bowel movement for two weeks. She was also evacuated to the nearest hospital.

At some point, in every location where the survivalists were placed, the competition became a game of who is going to starve the longest without his/her health deteriorating beyond the ability to survive. Those who came with a lot of extra pounds on their bodies, outlasted everyone else, unless they were plagued by loneliness or by missing their families and friends back home, wives and children.

One female survivalist was bitten by a poisonous spider trice on her buttocks and was able to heal her wounds with medicinal plants and concoctions she mixed, without tapping out.

One military guy tapped out after only two hours for fear of bears; one grizzly was circling his shelter very closely.

An older man broke his leg less than a week into his arctic survival.

One young guy was rescued in the middle of the night after being stalked and charged by a grizzly bear. The rescue team had to travel by truck on log roads for three hours then hike through a densely forested mountainous terrain in order to find him. He was safely rescued.

A prior contestant who survived to the end, just a few hours short of a win, had to tap out on a second location while successfully fishing but accidentally imbedding a fishhook into her right upper hand. No matter how hard she tried, the hook did not budge. It was stuck in her bleeding hand for 56 hours before she was driven to a hospital and two medical personnel in Mongolia were able to extract it.

A man ate infected muskrat and had to tap out with extremely painful abdominal pains, vomiting and diarrhea. His dehydration was so severe that he could not take his heart medication which potentially could have sent him into another heart attack.

A young guy tapped out because he was overcome by guilt and deep emotional remorse for killing his only companion in the Canadian Arctic, a friendly squirrel, and eating it.

A young lady, very accident prone, shot herself with an arrow in the back of the leg after successfully bagging a grouse with a bow. The wound luckily healed.

Hard-core survivalists gave up eventually out of loneliness, missing their spouses and children, longing for talking to people, or realizing that money, even half a million dollars, were not as important as being with loved ones.

Several endangered their health by losing too much weight, too fast, not calling for medical help, and being on the verge of organ failure. Several became so constipated that they suffered in agonizing pain. Starvation caused many contestants to experience intense dizziness, the inability to see, to think rationally, became disoriented, or blacked out in the woods, even dangerously close to a partially frozen deep lake.

One contestant claimed so joyously that she was in “the game” once she found trapped animals like rabbits or squirrels or caught fish. To me, it was not a game, it was human predators trying to outwit animal predators in an area devoid of other humans. It was so unforgiving and isolated in Mongolia that animal predators did not fear the human predators.

In the Canadian Artic, the frigid temperatures made the challenge that much more difficult. One squirrel, injured by an arrow, fought back, and bit the survivalist’s hand badly. The archer bled profusely and needed help.

A healthy and strong military guy tapped out even though he had a nicely built, warm shelter, warm and dry clothes, and enough food for a week and a half, because he realized that he was just buying time, waiting for others to tap out, time better spent with his three children and wife whom he adored.

One successful hunter from Virginia, who had lived with a tribe in Siberia for five years and learned from them excellent survival and hunting skills, killed a bull moose and a wolverine in the Arctic, yet despite eating moose meat protein every day, he lost weight by one pound a day in the absence of fat and other complex carbohydrates.

These people built with rope, knives, and axes remarkable shelters, fires, fished successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully when nature fought back, made tools, wove fishing nets, baskets, carved implements, made chairs, cups, plates, camp beds, built improvised and cleverly constructed canoes in MacGyver style, with spit and dirt, improvised methods to trap animals and catch fish, and scoured the land for berries, edible plants, healing plants, snails, leeches, mushrooms, tree sap, and unusual sources of kindle. All these skills and survival knowledge are lost to us as we live in our modern world where others perform tasks and manufacture what we need in exchange for our fiat money.

Sometimes their shelters caught fire, other times collapsed from the weight of rain or snow, high winds, or other unforeseen miscalculations. Many got flooded and wet in the temperate impenetrable rain forest of Vancouver Island, Canada. Every time it rained, water seeped out of the ground and flooded shelters, fire pits, while survivalists were asleep in sloshed sleeping bags on the ground or on top of makeshift beds of wood and pine boughs.

The winners confessed that they wanted to build a house or pay off an existing house with the prize money. A young winner wanted a house because he and his family lived in a yurt. The last person standing survived anywhere from 46 to 100 days in the wilderness alone. One contestant who remained 100 days in the Arctic and survived relatively healthy won one million dollars.

Most of us today have become soft and weak and could not possibly survive alone in those harsh conditions and wild locations. Furthermore, most humans would prefer to work for their own business and earn the half million dollars without endangering their lives around predatory and poisonous animals. 

Nobody is exactly sure what the long-term effects will be of such excessive and rapid weight loss to the point where teeth were loose and the amount of body fat was dangerously low, or how the survivalists' health will be affected in the future.

Monday, March 20, 2023

Indoctrination Nation, Sustainable Development, and Nudging

Recently, our natural gas utilities started to mail its customers a “nudging” letter, colorfully printed in green, blue, and black, under the guise of helping customers decide how much gas they consumed, compared to previous months and to homes of similar size in the area. The fact that they had access to such data and took the time to find homes of similar size in the area is bothersome enough.

Having access to such data, the gas company is letting us know whether we consumed more gas than “efficient homes” or more/less than similar homes, all described in “therms.” The therms were colored in green for efficient, blue for your home, and black for similar homes.

A quick search revealed that a “therm” is a “unit of heat equivalent to 100,000 Btu or 1.055 x 108 joules.” Since physics is not my forte, it might as well be in Greek. The gas company wrote that “a therm is a standard unit of measurement used to calculate natural gas use.”

The home profiling [spying] is done by using 100 single-family homes in the area with similar heating source and square footage. Should one find the report off, as if we knew that it was off, one is encouraged to take the Home Energy Assessment to make it more accurate. Additionally, they recommend upgrading to Energy Star appliances and installing a natural gas fireplace operated by the flip of a switch and a $75 rebate.

This letter is not going to cause me to change my heating behavior or consumption of any kind unless you triple the inflationary price again and I cannot afford to pay it. Who wants to be cold in winter?

If I turn the fireplace on, my gas bill will be twice as much. As it is, our gas bill was three times the price from previous months thanks to the Biden regime’s economic policies and inflation. And no, utility company, as you suggested, I did not have guests in my home that overstayed their welcome, thus forcing us to use more hot water for laundry.

This brings me to the modification of consumer behavior through incentives or through shaming with the help of innocuous nudging.

Cass R. Sunstein, a former Obama official, published a seven-page essay in 2014 in which he described a list of ten most important “nudges.” Microsoft Word - shortguide9_22.docx (ssrn.com)

“Liberty-Preserving Approaches” is steering people in the right direction as determined by those in power because consumers may not be smart or attentive enough to make their own logical decisions and choices. The government can institute bans and mandates, but nudges seem benign and do not strip you of liberty of choices, i.e., GPS, apps, text messages, alarm clocks, appointment reminders, etc.

Sunstein claims that nudges “maintain freedom of choice,” are “transparent and effective,” but “need evidence and testing.” “Some nudges are described as soft paternalism because they steer people in a certain direction,” wrote Sunstein. In his opinion, nudges are becoming quite important. He cites U.K.’s Behavioral Insights Team (Nudge Unit) and the U.S.’s White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team.

Sunstein wrote, In the context of retirement planning, automatic enrollment has proved exceedingly effective in promoting and increasing savings. In the context of consumer behavior, disclosure requirements and default rules have protected consumers against serious economic harm, saving many millions of dollars. Simplification of financial aid forms can have the same beneficial effect in increasing college attendance as thousands of dollars in additional aid (per student). Informing people about their electricity use, and how it compares to that of their neighbors, can produce the same increases in conservation as a significant spike in the cost of electricity.”

Sunstein’s ten important nudges are:

1.      Default Rules (automatic enrollment in programs such as education, health, retirement, savings whether you want it or not)

2.      Simplification (rules devised by government and corporatism, public-private partnerships)

3.      Uses of social norms (“reuse towels in hotels, most people do it to save the planet” – manipulating choices by shaming if you don’t do it like your neighbor)

4.      Increases in ease and convenience (make it easy and visible to shoppers, manipulating their easy v. harder choices)

5.      Disclosure (“sunlight is the best disinfectant”) – something that seldom happens in government

6.      Warnings, graphic or otherwise (large font, bold letters to trigger people’s attention, fines)

7.      Precommitment strategies (nudging procrastinators in ways that eventually become required)

8.      Reminders (appointments, emails, text messages, overdue bills notices)

9.      Eliciting implementation intentions (consumers, do you plan to go to college, do you plan to vote, to vaccinate your child)

10.  Informing people of the nature and consequences of their own past choices (“smart disclosure,” but is it smart if you are accessing my information when I did not ask you to do it, and without my consent, in order to “help” me save money or to sell me smart appliances that spy on my household even more?)

According to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations, Dr. Lori Foster, “In the real world, humans do not always behave in perfectly rational ways, something behaviorally informed policies and programs take into account, helping people, organizations, communities, and countries translate intention into action.” Who gets to decide what is a ‘perfectly rational way to behave’ and why should a globalist government decide?

Enter nudges to change people’s behaviors much faster in order to implement U.N. Agenda 21 now morphed into U.N. Agenda 2030. “Nudges can take many forms, but describe policy design choices or actions that apply insights from behavioral science to improve consumers’ existing choices. So how can nudges combat climate change, pollution and unsustainable use of the Earth’s resources?

That is a very good question when Sustainable Development (SD), the lynchpin to globalist enslavement, must be attained across the globe with no exceptions. “Agenda 2030 can only be accomplished if we understand the habits and behaviors that prevent our societies from fully achieving sustainable development,” said Dr Foster. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/nudge-action-behavioural-science-sustainability#:~:text=The%202030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%2C%20which%20includes,achieving%20changes%20in%20how%20we%20consume%20and%20produce.

Once the frowned-upon behaviors are understood, the globalist organization makes the behavioral change mandatory, for all humans, for their own good, as determined by a high-minded bureaucrat who knows better because their science is in a consensus, stripping choices away from the people’s decision-making. And it all starts with the innocuous “nudge” to change your behavior they dislike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Is Capitalism Today Ever Closer to Communism?

Communism through history wants to destroy all other social orders and to “communize the entire world” no matter what the human cost.

In 2023, the goal to “communize” the world is to “globalize” it under the aegis of the United Nations. It has been continually described over decades in many documents developed by its affiliated organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and state-sponsored private-public partnerships. The list of U.N.-sponsored conferences with the same goal, held in expensive and exotic locales, is very long.

Under communism, each citizen is forced to accept what the state says at any given time. Voicing dissent is controlled and punished by the Communist Party.

In the last three years, the United States has controlled and punished its citizens who dared to voice dissent to the planned pandemic, and they used the law and job losses to force citizens to obey draconian rules. The Democrat Party made sure that people were punished who expressed dissent.

Thought control was state policy, enforced by the Communist Party-controlled published media, radio, theater, and television. Nobody could express ideas that deviated from the party line.

The main stream media today controls the narrative of everything which is distributed to the media outlets by the Democrat Party. Social platforms online censor anybody who violates the Democrat Party narrative.

The communist state controls the economy – the planning, the production, and the distribution of goods and services.

In the last three years, the U.S. government in power controlled economic activity, planning (indirectly), and distribution by forbidding small and medium businesses to stay open. The government allowed only essential ‘crony capitalists’ to stay open.

The communist state determined what was needed in production, the wages, and the prices of goods and services. Because there was no competition, there was no incentive to improve quality, quantity, or diversity of goods, thus shortages were chronic.

During the last three years of government lockdowns, there were shortages, distribution lines were broken and are still affecting many industries, and the diversity of goods was severely reduced.

The communist economy depended to an extent on forced (volunteer) and slave (in gulags) labor. The communist state emphasized heavy industry and weapons, at the expense of the general population who suffered from chronic shortages of food, basics, medicine, medical care, and housing.

In our “capitalist” system, goods and services are supposed to be produced as a direct response to consumer demand and preferences. However, in the last three years, the heavy involvement of the Democrat-controlled government in the economy and its fuel and energy industries has resulted in constant market disruptions in the production, supply, and delivery of many goods and services even though demand is high.  Prices have skyrocketed and high inflation is now the norm.

Workers are restricted by the communist state by their labor book and internal passport which must be presented in order to work or when requested by police. A worker can quit his job for reasons only approved by the communist state and with the signed permission of the plant manager. Collective bargaining does not exist in a communist factory.

In the last three years employees in the United States have bee fired for non-compliance with a vaccine, for not wearing a mask, or for speaking against the vaccine, against the mask, or against the draconian dictates of the local, state, or federal government.

The Communist Party has totalitarian power and rules with no regard for the people. The individual exists only to serve the state. Communism is a government of men and not of laws. Minority rule dominates. Those in power have total control and are not accountable to the people. Communist national policy does not care about public opinion. The communist state does not care about the desires of the people. The communist state does not separate executive, legislative, and judicial powers.

Every issue described in the previous paragraph is happening right now in our American government controlled by the Democrat Party and its RINOs affiliates.

The communist state removes officials from power by “factionalism or death.” Political dissidents are ostracized from government, the Communist Party, disgraced, and some even executed as traitors to the cause. The party wins and holds power by cheating at the ballot box, fear, terror, and force. Citizens are marched to the voting precinct by communist activists, and the police watches over their shoulders to make sure they vote the right way.

Americans have seen irregularities and cheating at the ballot box in key states on a grand scale, but lady justice closed her eyes despite ample evidence. The Covid-19 pandemic has been used as an excuse to entrench cheating by mail-in voting.

Communist education has one important goal – to advance communism everywhere. Students are indoctrinated to be subservient, obedient, and conformist to the wishes of the state. Science and art must reflect life in the communist world and its alleged virtues. Teachers must conform to the communist party line and must indoctrinate students to reflect that line.

Teachers in this country are serving the interests of the Marxist unions, of the Democrat government in power, and the minority groups that control the narrative, globalism, racism, and sexual deviance. Parents have lost their parental rights to school boards, the Department of Education, academia, and public schools in general. Some parents have been barred from their children’s schools and others arrested for asking about their children’s curriculum, textbooks, and library books with pornographic and deviant content.

Individuals under communism have no dignity or freedom – the state has complete power over them. The communist constitution is a document that exists only for propaganda purposes.

Our U.S. Constitution is actually displayed as a document in a museum hall built around it. Congress and the legal system pay lip service to its existence but they alter its intent all the time.

There is no freedom of speech, press, and assembly under communism unless it serves the propaganda goals of the Communist Party. If one speaks against the party or the state, he will be disappeared in the middle of the night. Rights and privileges are given as rewards for good behavior.

Americans are now censored on a much larger scale than the Communist Party ever could with the help of politicians, technocrats, crony capitalists, technology, and the mainstream media. Americans are afraid to voice their opinions publicly for fear of losing their jobs or worse. The rights of all Americans are no longer guaranteed by law since we have a two-tier justice system. Rights and privileges are doled out as rewards just like they were under communism.

Law and order are inseparable from political control under communism – the law subordinates people to the state. The accused must provide proof of his innocence. The state has discretion to detain anybody without cause – he is “socially dangerous.” Citizens are denied open trials. The courts are instruments of the party and the secret police exists to enforce the dictates of the state.

With the existence of the two-tier justice system dominated by Democrat-appointed judges, are we that different from the communist state?

Private property is very limited by the communist state. People can own personal items, household stuff, and a plot of land on which they may live but not derive an income.

In the U.S., for the time being, we are still allowed to own private property and real estate from which we can earn additional income.

The communist state forbids religion and religious assembly. Churches are places of baptism, marriage, and last rites. The state destroys religion because it wants to create the “communist man” whose religion is atheism. The state employs priests for the purpose of indoctrinating the congregants.

We have a variety of religions in this country, but they are fast becoming indoctrination centers that promote the Democrat Party platform and ideology, displaying the proper BLM and gay flags on the marquee.

The communist state forbids travel and citizens are required to have personal identification documents with them at all times; changes of address must be reported immediately to the police. Villagers are not allowed to set up residence in the city. Heavily fortified borders isolate citizens from the rest of the world. Contacts with foreigners are forbidden and punished by law.

As President Biden and his Democrats dismantled the southern and northern borders, we are now an open land invaded daily by thousands of foreign nationals who come for welfare and nefarious reasons. They vote Democrat and are left alone to establish their own enclaves.

You be the judge - without borders, language, and a distinct culture, are we still a country? And how close are we to a totalitarian state?

 

Friday, March 10, 2023

Blue Jeans as Commodity Money

One day my body stopped having so much metabolism and the pairs of blue jeans I owned, mostly indigo blue made of stretchy cotton for extra luxury, stopped fitting me comfortably. It was high time to donate them to someone who could wear them and enjoy them. Long gone were the days of the 26-inch waist.

My first pair of jeans I owned in the U.S. bore the Wrangler label and were relatively cheap, twenty dollars. On the black market, people living under impoverished communism had to pay $150 for the same pair if they wanted to own it, or exchange it for other goods and services. The proletariat were all poor working people, making around 800 lei per month, which translated into $67, at the pegged exchange rate imposed by the Communist Party of 12 lei to a dollar.

The decision was not hard to make, it was more important to survive and use a pair of jeans worth $150 as commodity money than to actually wear it. Besides, western wear was considered decadent and frowned upon.

If one owned a pair of jeans, that person was either a member of the Communist Party and thus able to buy goods cheaper or in foreign currency, deriving extra income from bribes from one’s position in government; from the confiscation of goods from black marketers arrested; as a security police informer who received extra income from snitching on neighbors and relatives; or as a black marketer who bought and sold foreign goods, donated or purchased from traveling foreigners.

Since blue jeans were bought and sold on the black market and often traded for other foreign goods and/or domestic services such as medical care and pharmaceuticals, one could argue that blue jeans were a strong commodity money in communist regimes. They were almost as valuable as a cassette player.

Using jeans as commodity money was not something new, people traded goods and services in many countries. In times of war and economic depression, people used cigarettes, chocolate, nylons, soap, tobacco, pelts, shampoo, bullets, medicine, and other goods in shorts supply as commodity money.

At the time the Wrangler jeans cost $20, the minimum wage in the U.S. was $3.10 per hour. That was hardly enough to pay bills and still have money left to cover other costs, including clothes. The blue jeans would have cost a day’s work.

My friends at the time, Joan and Gail, had gifted me on my birthday my first pair of real American blue jeans, Wrangler, made in the good ole U.S.A., not in China. They were simple, durable, simple, and affordable.  But they were so much more. They represented the quintessential American spirit of freedom, of exploration and adventure, as well as the work ethic and resilience in the American west tamed by good ole cowboys and other immigrants who came to America to settle in the land with so many possibilities. The jeans became the workhorse of the west in the new America because they could last so long.

Levi’s were the original miner’s brown pants reinforced with rivets. A miner’s wife in Reno, Nevada, asked tailor Jacob Davis in 1871 to make pants that would withstand the tears of pockets and button fly and he came up with the rivets. Local miners wore overalls made of a canvas material called “duck cloth,” in light brown. Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss, a German immigrant who owned a dry-goods store in San Francisco, applied for and received a patent for pants reinforced with rivets. 

I am sure, a pair of Levi jeans would have been more expensive back in the day when my first pair of Wrangler jeans was purchased. Sometimes I wish that I still had that first pair of jeans. I lost it in the many moves and clothes donations I have made since then.

The original Blue Bell brand was sewn and manufactured for men but, when the company became Wrangler in 1960, women were eventually included in the manufacturing process. To this day, cowboys and farmers prefer the Wrangler brand.

The truth is that foreigners, when they think of America, they think of blue jeans and cowboys with big felt hats riding into the sunset on their horses or driving their Mustangs onto the wide open roads. It is not that they want to be cowboys, they envy the free spirit and the ability to go anywhere at the drop of a hat, to ride into endless possibilities and dreams.

 

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

The Communist Woke Are Dedicated Useful Idiots

Few Americans have heard of William Z. Foster and Gus Hall, former leaders of the Communist Party U.S.A. William Z. Foster had died in Moscow on September 1, 1961, having devoted most of his adult life to the communist Russians. Foster had gone to the Soviet Union in 1961 to seek medical care because, he said, he could not afford it in the U.S. When he died, the Soviets gave him a huge memorial service in the Red Square and offered to bury him in Kremlin’s walls. Instead, his ashes were brought to a cemetery outside Chicago.

Gus Hall dedicated his entire life to the communist movement as well, and, having participated in riots all over the country. As a young man, he testified his willingness to take up arms against constitutional authorities.

The two Americans were classical examples of useful idiots, utilized by Soviets to further their communist agenda. Their devotion to the cause of communism exemplifies that fact that communists, since they took power in 1917, have built a veritable “empire” around the world based on intense propaganda. By 1961 there were 40 million members in 87 communist parties spread around the globe.

To people like me, who have escaped the clutches of the Communist Party and its dictatorship, it is shocking that American citizens would want to join a movement that promises to destroy their way of life permanently. Voters can choose communism at the ballot box, but they must fight their way out of it if they want to escape its tyrannical boots.

For naïve and ignorant “woke” Americans, it seems that the promise of free “stuff” is enough for them to repudiate capitalism and to embrace the illusory promise of a cure for their financial problems and other problems of the world. What are the attractions of communism that convince these Americans to demand the replacing of capitalism with socialism/communism?

1.      Economic attraction:

People who are desperate economically, i.e., have lost jobs, savings, are in severe debt, lost their homes, are hungry because food is so expensive, will accept desperate measures to resolve their problems. They truly believe that socialism/communism will solve all their problems and they would be able to start a new life, a much happier and healthier one, with a clean slate.

What they do not realize is that, even under communism, there are haves and have nots, there is no equality, nor “equity.” If you don’t work, you don’t eat, and you have to work where you are told. You will get a miserly and spartan apartment with no furnishings. Food will be basic and hard to find. Savings and loans will not exist, healthcare will be sparse and inadequate, basic necessities missing in the stores. Electricity, heat, and water will be rationed along with food. A centralized and controlled economy under communism will not yield any prosperity for the masses, only for the people at the top who control it all.

2.      Sociological attraction:

Americans who have experienced various forms of social injustice or prejudice are strong candidates for communism. Some Americans are frustrated with existing conditions which they find unfair and want to eliminate all injustices. Frustrated with the democratic process, these adherents to communism believe that only communism can fix all injustices.

The communist propaganda portrays communism as “the champion of social protest, the only force striving to improve the conditions of the oppressed.” This is a total lie. There is no place to redress injustice under communism because the entire system is rigged by and sustained for the success of the elites at the top of the Communist Party.

3.      Political attraction:

Communist propaganda promises the simplicity of one party that runs everything and delivers paradise. The propaganda highlights the success of the former Soviet Union, economically, industrially, scientifically, educationally, and technologically, but hide the huge human cost to achieve this communist political order – all the human suffering, gulags, and deaths at the hands of the Communist Party, the only political entity allowed to exist.

4.      Psychological attraction:

Highly insecure and inadequate Americans in their personal lives are attracted to communism because they don’t have to be burdened by any responsibility for their bad decisions and terrible actions. They are happy to let communist party leaders make decisions for all individuals. Some even give up their prior religious beliefs and take up atheism as a poor replacement.

The party offers endless activities of propaganda, pulling them more and more into the communist movement and forcing them to abandon any outside interests. The party becomes their whole lives. Educating and guiding the masses into submission becomes an all-consuming activity for “selfless dedication and self-sacrifice.”

Soviets were exceptionally good at drawing in the under-developed world because lives were governed by ignorance and poverty. The communist social activists helped locals improve their diets, prevent disease through simple hygienic measures, their living conditions, helped them build roads, railroads, and provided them with education and technical training. Many less developed countries became communist easily and permanently even though their citizen’s lives are rotten and desperate to this day. The communist propaganda is so strong that citizens continue to vote their way into communist-delivered poverty, crime, and misery.

Communist activists cleverly exploited nationalism to their advantage in less developed nations. They disguised themselves as the supporters of the “right of all nations to their complete independence.”

The Soviets and the Chinese offered them trade agreements, technical aid, economic aid, military aid, and university scholarships at the most prestigious universities.  The communists worked very hard to undermine non-communist governments in these developing countries and held back the modernization process.

The "woke” Americans in this country are the dedicated fools who believe that socialism and communism are the ways to secure their futures. They may understand that socialism is communism light or may not understand at all what they are asking for.

The “woke” want to live like the “socialist” Nordic countries that seem to be paradise transported on bicycles. What they don’t understand is that those Nordic countries are not socialist, they are capitalist nations with free enterprise, and a government that strongly favors national welfare for its citizens and taxes them to death to pay for these welfare programs.