Progressivism Makes America Worse

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Americans are bored with their abundant lifestyle.  Western civilization is bored with its wealth, bucolic life, and success.  Academics and Hollywood elites have taken it upon themselves to bring all this success and wealth down a few notches if not to the first rung of the prosperity ladder. They’ve had their fun time in the sun, it is now time for the third world to take over and to teach them how to live, work, and worship the right way.

Having just one protected class in America was not enough; we brought in Islam with its clean living and fertility to replace the declining birth rate in the west. Western young women and men are not interested in marriage and reproduction, they want to have fun, and, if it means having it in the street or on reality TV, the more the better for the narcissistic society that we have become.

Right now the welfare spigot is open and it is flowing generously to the rest of the world. Although America is despised by all, they crowd the irrelevant border to cross illegally so they have an opportunity to our generous welfare system, our injudicious immigration laws, and to take over our wealth and our way of life.

Americans used to enjoy working long hours, overtime, bought every amenity imagined on credit and became slaves to banks, credit cards, the downtrodden, the aging population, and the ersatz disabled. Now they are still slaves to a bloated financial system  but have added their liberal children in the basement and the protected illegal immigrant underclass and pretty much any third world tin pot dictatorship that can force its way into the United Nations human rights council and muscle and squeeze more billions out of Satan’s country, the very generous U.S.A where money grows on trees just waiting to be plucked by intrepid illegals with no intention to ever assimilate or to contribute their share to the society they are plundering.

Gadgets that open the window to the world have cast a 24-hour glow on the faces of all generations, beholden to social media. They are stars, they are somebody, they are Internet and Instagram trolls, they can reach the stars with their hidden identities. They are finally somebody, no longer the ignored taxpayer or the bullied public school specimen brainwashed into liberalism and global citizenship utopia.

The vice of working endless hours every day is slowly dying down, replaced by apathy and a sense of entitlement to the government’s trough in the European socialist style. Nobody is asking the obvious question, the elephant in the room, which group of people is going to replenish the abundance trough if everybody adopts a lifestyle of government dependency from cradle to grave?

Materialism has triumphed for decades and opportunity has turned to success, and the rat race has ensued which turned the vast country into a fine-tuned watch; but its components are beginning to age and rust, and materialism has given way to indifference and apathy to anything that could remotely resemble what once used to be “borders, language, and culture.”

Americans have been brainwashed for many decades of academic excellence and liberal experimentation that they don’t have a culture and their history is bad, their men of fame, their inventors and entrepreneurs were bad people.  Inventions that made life easier and saved billions around the globe have suddenly become a danger to the planet and to Mother Nature itself.

The United Nations and the global elites have taken it upon themselves to socially engineer the masses into compliance with their wishes because, as rich as they are, they know for sure what is best for everyone, freedom be damned. They are gods of technology, of banking, of genetically modified agriculture, of pharma, of law, of politics, and are far superior to the dumbed down masses who must obey or be nudged through the power of the law, the courts, and of imprisonment.

“Thoughts are free” says an old WWII protest song, Die Gedanken sind frei, but corporate and political elites know that you have an “unconscious bias” and these thoughts you didn’t know existed in your brain must be rooted out with indoctrination classes in the workplace. If they could have, they would have physically extracted your evil and unapproved thoughts with pliers as if they were rotted teeth.  If you want to keep your job, you must think the way elites tell you to think and you must harbor thoughts only approved by progressive guidelines of the new world order.

Half of Americans who vote are ashamed of their country, of who they are, of their history, and of their culture. Teachers are more than happy to indoctrinate your children into their twisted political views.

Unconcerned Americans are at cross-roads of self-destruction, following in the footsteps of the intrepid Europeans who are busy committing demographic suicide and societal hara-kiri by bringing in non-assimilating masses of economic refugees from Africa and the Middle East at such alarming rates that many beautiful European cities have already been turned into cesspools of violence and destruction.

The triumph of materialism has finally hit a reinforced concrete wall built by progressive agendas and elite billionaires who can afford tall fences, expensive security systems, and armed body guards, in a gated and protected luxurious life that the rest of us cannot afford. We don’t want their wealth, we just want a safe country with well-defined and protected borders.

The West’s ladder of success is sporting dangerously loose rungs and the last few are even missing.  Can it be repaired and salvaged? How many Donald Trumps would be needed to fix it? Are we passed the civilization point of no return, headed for a down-sloping road into a furiously bubbling cauldron?

To put it bluntly, no matter how hard President Trump tries to make America economically better for everyone, those afflicted by a serious mental disorder, best described as liberal race-baiting and the progressive worship of the dictatorship of the oppressed, are making America worse.

This is like Heaven, But not Good Enough for Progressives

Photo: Andrei Pandele

My 1977 English teacher who said I would never amount to anything because my English was not British enough, taught me how to type on an old Remington typewriter with each letter attached to a striking metal arm. These armed letters often tangled if I typed too fast. When the school was allowed a few IBM SELECTRIC typewriters, I felt like we had arrived. I could type really fast, 85 words per minute. One of the big shots in the Communist Party had a child in our class and nothing but the best was provided for his progeny; so all 36 students got lucky.

Come to think of it, maybe my English teacher in Romania was right. In my 30^th year of teaching in the U.S. my supervisor gave me a pretty shocking evaluation possibly born by her total scorn for my conservative, anti-communist bad attitude. On a scale of 1-5, 5 being the best, she rated my ability to speak, read, and comprehend the English language as a 1. At the same time, one of my colleagues who hailed from a Central American country spoke very grammatically poor English, with students who struggled to understand his lectures, received a 5. He was sincere enough to brag about it.

It was hard to describe to my blue collar parents what an electric typewriter looked like and how fast we could type government-approved propaganda. To top it off, we learned short-hand just in case we were required to take dictation. I can’t say I’ve ever used short-hand except in college but I used typing constantly. It was probably the most useful skill the commies taught me. My daughter still remembers me practicing short-hand with my fingers in the air when she was a child. I have not forgotten the symbols to this day.

I could never see myself as a secretary, typing all day for a commie apparatchik boss because I could not sit still that long and I got bored easily, I needed intellectual stimulation, but that was the only option for the child of blue collar parents unless I could win one of the few seats available at the university. College education was free but numbers were limited and controlled. It was not that blue collar children were not smart, capable, or great achievers in school; the children of Communist Party members of the right pedigree received priority over the rest of us, the proletariat.

Today I get frustrated when something does not download fast enough or gets stuck in cyberspace. I have the world’s libraries and books at my fingertips. Very small children are adept at using and programming computers. Taking a trip one day in elementary school to the computing ministry was an experience I will never forget. The computer that I hold in my lap or in the palm of my hand today occupied then an entire building. I think my cell phone probably has more capabilities today than the building housing the data cruncher for the country then. Our car onboard computers are probably more sophisticated. They can self- diagnose, have a black box, can be manipulated from afar, and makes driving a comfortable breeze. Why would an against-the-people government with an environmental agenda want to restrict our freedom of mobility by taking roads out of commission, not maintaining them, not repairing bridges, and taxing us per miles driven? How is it better to go back to walking, biking, wagons, and horse riding? Who is going to benefit from reverting to less civilization?

Not long ago, when I did my doctoral dissertation at 28, I had to use computer-punch cards.  One single search with carefully chosen key words produced an entire drawer of cards. They had to be kept in the right order for them to be properly read. All it took is dropping one bundle on the ground and the search work had to start all over again for $28 per search.

I never dreamed that one tiny cell phone in the 21^st century would be my TV, computer, radio, calculator, game board,  picture album, correspondence, file cabinet, friends chat, flash light, agenda, grocery list, scanner, camera, notebook, library, store, shopper, recorder, and compass. This global positioning system device comes in handy when I get lost and it helps NSA keep track of where I am, what I say wherever I happen to be, what I do, whom I am doing it with, what I think, and keep a general tab on my life. One ad was promoting on radio the idea that Utah should turn their water off and the spying would stop.

In the 20^th century, the commies had to do hard work to spy on us – hire snitches, informers, detectives, plant listening devices in walls, bug personal belongings, phone receivers, interrogate us, open and read our mail – an entire army of employees on the payroll of the dreaded Securitate, a junior KGB arm. It kept people off the streets, “gainfully” employed, and meagerly fed.

Even a one-year old knows now what a remote control does. Back then we had to get up out of the uncomfortable wooden chairs we owned and switch off the channel by hand to the other channel. The president was on both channels spewing communist propaganda lies, but we had TV. Once a week, the entire block would gather to watch a movie or soccer game at one ground-floor apartment that had a black and white TV large enough for a big crowd. When too many showed up, the TV was moved outside which was a bit unfriendly on account of the nearby dumpster and flies buzzing around. But the cheap home-made wine and beer were plentiful. The stores were always empty of basic foodstuff but wine and beer were never in short supply.

We played outside in dirt, mud, and snow with total disregard for our heads. Nobody thought about buying us helmets or covering the one electric plug to protect a curious and investigative toddler who might stick a pin inside the socket. Two hundred and forty volts deliver a pretty serious and painful jolt but, some of us survived. I still remember the excruciating pain though. I was bored watching mom press clothes with her wrought iron with a handle, heated every so many minutes on the open flame on the stove. It was progress from grandma’s version that had a chamber filled with burning coals. It is not hard to imagine we wore clothes sometimes with the curious shape of the iron in a brown-burned outline.

We had one notebook, one pencil, one eraser, and one pencil sharpener when we went to school. It was really special if we had a pen or a nice fountain pen with black ink. Blue ink was much cheaper. A rudimentary quill was made of wood and the replaceable metal tips we dipped in ink to write with were expensive. No calculators to perform the most sophisticated operations in calculus. We had to use our brains and basic skills of computation, no Chinese beaded abacus.

Uncle John, studying engineering, had a slide ruler that made complex calculations. I never took the time to learn how to use it although I was familiar with the compass and other simple tools used in geometry.

Laundry was painfully done by hand with lie soap in the tub when water was available and the tub was not occupied with chilling watermelons and wine bottles. Those who could afford a fridge were hampered by its dorm size. In the country, laundry was done with the washboard and a wooden tub by the river. Today the old country has washing machines but everything comes out extremely wrinkled. Although available, driers are not used because the electricity to drive them is too expensive and EU rules mandate power use in such a way that it short-circuits the entire block if someone does try to use a drier in conjunction with another kitchen appliance.

I sit in the elegant and clean metro car ferrying Washingtonians to their bureaucratic jobs and I remember the crowded, overflowing buses, with bodies hanging out the open doors, filled to capacity with the stench of sweaty bodies mixed with Diesel fumes. They were building a metro when I left in 1978. I am told that it is extremely crowded today.

The comfortable and mostly on time VRE trains whisk Virginians comfortably on their daily commute to work and home. Every time I see one pass by, I still see in my mind’s eye and can smell the soot of the commuter train I took for three years to the university long time ago in another life. It was standing room only for 60 km. We knew each other by name and where we commuted. Once, a fellow passenger, a railroad employee, saved my life. The train had started to slowly move and people were still jumping on. I did the same, I did not want to miss the five o’clock but I miscalculated the iced steel handle. My hands slipped and I would have wound up under the train tracks had it not been for this man grabbing the fur collar on my green winter coat and pulling me up inside the train. Thank God I weighed so very little back then!  I still remember the train’s whistle that day. I get nauseous just thinking about it.

I can get in my car and go anywhere I want today as long as I can find and have money to buy gas. There was always a longing to go places when I was growing up under communism. But we were only able to go on a small radius, as far as our meager salaries allowed, most of which was spent on food, rent, and utilities. No luxuries for travel or fancy clothes, just enough to cover our bodies and keep us warm. No designer shoes, no purses, no style changes every three months. Everyone got one pair of sandals and one pair of winter boots each year until we outgrew them or they wore out. It was an odd curiosity to watch the president’s wife carry a purse. Generally women carried a shopping bag. My first purse was a black beaded clutch Dad bought me for the prom. I still have it today. I could not stand to part with it no matter how many other purses I may own.

We get mad when our flights get canceled or delayed. We were so exploited and controlled by the commie elites, we could not fly anywhere. We were not allowed to go outside of our national borders and passports were refused for travel. Only exceptional athletes, musicians, translators, actors, ballerinas, and Communist Party members of the upper echelon could fly but each had a security detail and assigned tails at all times.

I remember gawking at an artistic display of fruits in Galleries Lafayette, on a trip to Paris as an American. They were selling cherries on Christmas Day for 80 euros a kilo. Nobody gives it a thought and takes it for granted how well most Americans live today. They’ve never had to suffer hunger or shortages of anything. They get annoyed if they have to stand in line to pay for their groceries. They should thank God for living in a country that is so successful and most things are abundant and available year around.

We take for granted the electricity in our homes and clean water. We expect lights to come on and water to flow out of the tap. It is a disaster when a storm strikes and these services are temporarily interrupted. Nobody stops to think what it would be like when electricity and water will be rationed because of the misguided push towards solar and wind energy, parasitic forms of energy that would never supply the power needed for our huge economy and swelling population.

Even the most decrepit hospitals in this country are considered Club Med in most countries and everybody, legal or illegal, gets free care in the ER. Yet progressives don’t think our system works, it is “socially unjust” just like our entire country, we must nationalize health care, ration it, and force the formation of black market medicine with envelopes stuffed with cash.

It is heaven how we live today but it is not good enough for progressives because spoiled brats have no point of reference or baseline to compare to and appreciate their windfall of prosperity.

Forgotten are the wagon trails, the pioneers who sacrificed so much in the 19^th century, the early 20^th century prospectors, farmers, cattlemen, businessmen, industrialists, miners, steel manufacturers, road and bridge workers, and other laborers who built such a prosperous nation while living in squalor, poverty, uncertainty, exposed to the elements, without light and water, on horse and buggy, or covered wagons, riding horses, riding trains that were often robbed, walking, suffering and sacrificing so that the brats of today can complain with a Starbucks latte in one hand and a smart gadget in another what a terrible country America is, how unjustly crony capitalism exploits the 99 percenters, and how ashamed they are of being American. I don’t know what’s stopping them from giving up their passports and moving to the socialist paradise of their choice.

They should be ashamed of their appalling ignorance of their own history and of their blind allegiance to foreign and domestic nefarious elements who are out to destroy our civilization that others before them had built with sweat and tears, never demanding “entitlements” they had not earned.

 

Poverty

Poverty is faith in government who is robbing the population blind while leading it over a cliff. Poverty is ignorance and illiteracy. Poverty is accepting your fate of servitude without so much as a whimper. Poverty is misplacing your trust in ordinary men while neglecting God. Poverty is a lack of hygiene. Poverty is watching your children and loved ones die because you failed to wash your hands or obtain clean water. Poverty is watching 3 million people die of malaria world-wide in the misplaced belief that DDT is worse. Poverty is death by famine near silos full of genetic engineered corn and grain. Poverty is being unable to get clean water. Poverty is accepting welfare and expecting entitlements from a omniscient and omnipotent government. Poverty is losing the will to fight to better yourself.

Westerners understand poverty as the difference between haves and haves not.
I remember the conversation I've had with my former mother-in-law long time ago. We were talking about Romanian poverty and I asserted that I was poor. Jean angrily declared my statement to be false. I considered myself poor since I did not have a dime to my name, a home, or any wealth. I was 21 years old, freshly off the communist boat so to speak. Her explanation was that I could not possibly be poor, I was married to her son, we lived in their nicely appointed ranch home, her son ran the farm, and they had money in the bank. Many Americans would respond to the question, are you poor, with a resonant yes. The reason most people answer yes is that they confuse wealth and income. They are short of cash in their pockets, others have no money in the bank, some do not own the car or home of their dreams, or have no accummulated wealth. They may be cash poor but are even poorer in certain commodities for which they are willing to give up their cash. Are we really poor in America? By most standards, Americans are not poor. Even homeless people have more wealth when compared to many citizens of other countries. Poverty is thus relative to most people. Poverty does not make one sad just as wealth does not make one happy. Some people don't even realize how poor they are, they are blissfully ignorant of reality, or may not even understand that such a concept of poverty exists.

Years ago Americans took a group of home-grown homeless to Russia to demonstrate the evils of capitalism that allowed these people to be homeless. The Russians stormed out of the building in disgust when they found out that these so called "homeless" did not work. How did they expect sympathy from the Russians when they made no effort to work? The soviets' philosophy was simple, if you did not work, don't complain that you are homeless.

People living under communism did not live pampered lives and the communist government did very little to improve their lot in life, just a bare minimum. The utopian society in which everyone was equal was not so egalitarian after all. Everyone lived in ugly and drab concrete appartments, sparsely furnished, and paid similar rents. The government decided what the needs of each family were and that was how far anyone could advance, if you can call that progress. Few families actually owned their own home in the city. Anemic bulbs provided intermittent lighting when the party did not shut the power off for reasons of conservation or inability to produce or pay for enough electricity.
The ruling elite occupied elegant villas that had been forcefully confiscated from businesses and individuals after the rightful owners were jailed on trumped up "crimes against the communist ideology." The elaborate grey complexes in the city had five to nine stories with semi-finished stairwells. Nine story buildings had elevators that constantly trapped its riders for hours when power outages occurred or from lack of proper maintenance. The common area and the stairwells were the responsibility of each renter to maintain and clean. Fines were levied if people did not take turns to clean the stairs. The garbage bay was always nasty, smelly, and unsanitary since the city was supposed to provide these services whenever they saw fit to do it. Kids played in very large groups and nobody supervised them to make sure they were safe. They were often run over by cars while playing in the streets, on the sidewalks, or crossing the road. People used sidewalks for parking, with total disregard for the law which was never enforced. Very few people owned a TV or radios and phones were even scarcer. One in ten apartments owned a TV and it was customary to invite the whole street over in the home with a TV if a good movie, football game, or concert were playing. That was not a frequent occurrence since the communists only broadcast two stations in black and white, both heavy on constant propaganda and nauseating 24/7 speeches by the president/dictator. Radios were more common but people had to pay a fiscal monthly tax for the right to own both a radio and a TV, a type of subscription that one had to pay whether they had an antenna or not. Inspectors came into homes unannounced to check ownership of TVs and radios, and compliance with the fiscal tax. Phones were rarer because it took close to 14 years to have a phone installed from the time application was made until it was actually installed. My parents applied for a phone when I was in kindergarten and we did not get it until I was in 12th grade! There was a joke about a person going to the post office to fill out a request for phone installation and the clerk told the customer that it will be in 14 years. The customer asked whether it will be a.m. or p.m. Irritated, the clerk answered, "what differenc does it make, it is 14 years from now." The customer answered calmly, "the plumber is coming in the morning."

Because everyone earned the same amount of money, there was no incentive to excell, to work harder, or to go the extra mile. The work ethic was, "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us." My dad who was an engineer, was responsible for several men in his crew at the refinery. Most days his charges were hard to find because they were hiding in different areas, asleep. The work ethic was non-existent thanks to the low pay and the communist mentality to give everybody a living wage for just showing up, not based on performance.

Country folk were a little better off - they could grow a garden and raise farm animals, a luxury that city people did not have. They could also own a modest home, some better than others. In some far away villages, homes were made of bricks built of mud mixed with straw. Come to think of it, it was cheap and a great insulator both in winter and summertime - and a great burrowing and hiding place for mice and rats. Some homes were built of wood, brick, and stucco but lacked basic amenities such as electricity, indoor plumbing, and running water. A small barn provided winter shelter for farm animals. Dogs were kept outside in a dog house, poor creatures, but cats had better lives indoors. Dogs were more utilitarian than pets in the sense of providing guard to the owner or the flock of sheep. Only large animals were tended to by vets. It was a luxury - real vets were hard to find. A person with some vet training sufficed. Even in times of food shortages, village people had chickens, cows, pigs, and gardens to feed their families. A small plot could raise enough corn and vegetables to sustain them through winter. It was harder getting rice, flour, and oil and other basic staples. The communist co-operative who had forced everybody to give up their lands for the "common good" would force villagers to work in the fields, back breaking work, for a small percentage of the crop in the fall. The government took the lion's share, what was left was divided among the collective villagers who had plowed, seeded, weeded, hoed, and harvested the wheat, corn, or whatever crop the collective cooperative had planted on directions from the communist party planners. The common land and labor did not work very well since some villagers were more industrious and motivated than others yet the remainder of the crops was equally shared. This angered those who worked hard to see the fruits of their labor go to lazy villagers who did not contribute much work to the crops. The crop and industry planners had no experience in any of the sectors they made life and death decision on and often no formal education, but they were considered the "experts." Their only qualification was membership in the communist party and the ability to change their views on command as the wind blew from the direction of the dictator president and his wife who was very much involved in politics.

Children had few toys and improvised creatively for entertainment and play. I personaly owned one doll, a doll bed, a teddy bear, and a set of 9 block puzzle that could assemble a different picture on each side of the cube. I felt extremely lucky when my grandfather cobbled together a sled from a few wooden slats and two pieces of heavy iron which he welded together. This sled gave me endless hours of joy and many scrapes and bruises. My grandfather was the kind of man who could make McGuyver proud - he put together repair parts for the villager's bikes and motorcycles. He never charged them, he bartered or expected nothing in return. I watched him in fascination when he welded bike tires with glue and pliers. I used to joke that grandpa could fix anything with dirt and spit.

Everybody owned one nice outfit and pair of shoes which they only wore on special holidays: Easter, Christmas, baptisms, weddings, or funerals. The rest of the year, villagers went about happily in their bare feet and some old, sun washed, well worn outfit. City folk at least wore shoes all the time. They had to, there was too much debris and opportunities to get hurt. Every summer I got a new pair of sandals and every winter a new pair of boots. They were usually ill fitting and they caused me years of pain and surgery later in life.

The sparsely, spartan furnished apartments had a bed and a chifferobe, there were no such things as walk-in closets. Our kitchen, hallway, and bathroom were about the size of a large walk-in closet. We had a living room that doubled as dining room and my bedroom. It contained a bed, a couch, a dining table with three chairs and a bookcase. The one bedroom, my parents', had a bed, a black and white TV, and a chifferobe. That is how rich we were because the communist party had decided those to be our only needs based on the pay my parents received in exchange for their hard labor, as in the communist mantra, ... "to each according to their needs." The kitchen had a small cupboard, a sink, and a table with two chairs. When I was in high school, my parents had bought a very small, dorm-sized refrigerator which we placed in the hallway because there was no room in the kitchen.

Few people owned a car and most of us took the bus anywhere or walked. Children were not ferried to school by buses, nobody was fed breakfasts or lunch at school. We were lucky if we had something home to eat. Nobody went on vacations and travel abroad was impossible since the government only gave visas to very special people who were part of the communist millieu. The citizens had very little contact with the outside world, save for listening to Voice of America via short wave radio. Such broadcasts kept our hopes alive for a better life. And Hollywood gave us a fantasized world of America and glimpses of celluloid life in everyday America, or at least, what we thought everyday America to be. Many of us really thought money grew on trees for Americans. They were not blessed because they worked hard, were entrepreneurs and free, but because they were born rich. The first few years of my moving to the U.S., every friend and relative sent letters requesting blue jeans, medicine, thinking that they cost a pittance in such a rich country. It did not matter that I was poor as a church mouse and could not afford my own medicine, clothes, or visits to the doctor. How could I be poor in America, the land of opportunity? My family could not understand that wealth took time to create and income would come later with the opportunity to better myself.

Cities had museums, theater, and cinema, and although not very expensive by western standards, few Romanians could afford to go since there were other needs that had to be met before a movie, a play, or a visit to the museum. Some larger villages, closer to a metropolis had movie showings once a month in the collective co-op meeting center. John Wayne was everybody's popular hero and his movies played over and over, with subtitles. As a matter of fact, I taught myself English by watching John Wayne movies. I could hear the American English and repeat and mimic his accent. This resulted often in mispronounciation since proper diction was not the goal of a movie dialog. I later took two years of English in high school and learned proper British English.

Medical care was free to all, but the quality and availability of it was very poor. Villagers were worse off since their care was relegated to a nurse with 6 months of training and the ambulance took days to arrive with no help, medicine, or life saving support, just a driver. Each village had a co-op store with a few supplies of necessities, none of which included food. Villagers had to take the bus into town if they needed staples such as flour, sugar, cooking oil, and rice. The bus made twice a day runs, if it was closer, 10 miles of less, to a metropolis. If the village was remote, there were no bus routes and the villagers traveled by wagons once every so many months to get supplies for several families. They were totally cut off from civilization although they may have been only 35 miles from a large town.

And yet we were so much better off than other third world countries. Poverty is relative, no matter how you dice it. If I had to choose, United States is still the best country in the world to be poor in.