It is a widely noted belief that the American perception of the failure of Communism as believed to be implemented within the Soviet Union comes down to one, hardly varying comment: Human nature won't support it.
This may perhaps be true.
While the Soviet dictators spread their tyrannical rule throughout the Russian Block, they made certain that the propaganda and the country's common goal stay on message: Utopianism and Brotherhood. These guises have fooled many Conservative, Progressive, European and American neighbors alike into believing that, through brainwashing or bribery, they had achieved this wondrous goal for the better part of a century before `Human Nature' ushered about its collapse.
They certainly hold this belief, and as such:
Soviet Propaganda is affecting your rights as an American Citizen to this day.
If you will;
the rabbit hole.
You see, to admit that Human Nature wouldn't allow for the continued presence of a `Communist Republic,' one must believe that it existed and that it had some trial by man that proved faulty. Many today still hold the belief, through mere circular logic, that a Utopia on the Other side of the Pacific existed, functioned, and still reserved several select free spaces at the Gulags, if for millions of men happened to suffer some incurable dissident neurosis.
Let us draw a parallel, one strikingly adept as it is superficially absurd.
In the event of any Superpower, the citizenry is likely to suspect, and conceivably truly `believe' if they are to be considered Patriots, that the nation in which they dwell is tantamount to the closest thing any state on earth, at that very moment, has come to Utopian stature. And perhaps, as a consequence, will ever come.
This opens a potential and hardly worthwhile semantic debate. `Utopia' here is used in the practical terms, please take note of the phrases "closest thing" and "will ever come." It dictates the Citizen's certain `personally' held truth that their state is the superlative model to which all other states--who are surely nowhere near their stature--should aspire as to become.
If we can accept this mindset as extraordinarily present in the years of the Cold War on both sides of the Ocean, we must acknowledge its even greater presence today.
The Soviet Union and its brand of `Communist Utopianism' having been toppled at the end of the last century, (by not only a well played game of diplomatic `checkers,' but also the tipping point of `Human Nature') within it's will was granted the United States a Hegemonic role in the confirmation of its never-ending ideological dominion.
As with all senses, perception is a matter of degrees. In this instance, America perceived the confirmation, through the deposing of a theoretically dissident leviathan mindset, its manifest for a New American Century (a
Project, if you will...).
The Soviet Union Goliath fell with such a thud, it is said to have woken 1.3 Billion of its Chinese neighbors ten minutes early for their days work in the factory.
Though in America, it was said to have gone relatively unnoticed in the way of wakeup calls: having been mistaken for the continued--and yes even increased testing--of well-funded military-industrial products.
No need for alarm on this front. (Johnny, put down that gun.)
Several wars of Liberation, ideological indoctrination, and a handful of disregarded genocides later, we arrive in present day America, 2006--some six months before an off-year presidential, and very much on-year congressional election.
What headlines grace the front pages of our Daily Newspapers and our Minutely Weblogs? NSA wiretaps, Secret Prisons, Executive Meddling on nearly all bills passed since a 29% approval-rated president acquired his office. What does this mean on the ideological front? In a word, Sacrifice.
And not just Sacrifice, my fellow citizen, greedy sacrifice: expedient compromise, the relegation of thought and informed debate to precaution through cronyism, censorship reliant upon fear, and mass hysteria.
How is it, one might wonder, that such things come to be accepted as reasonable acts by public officials we have the ability to remove, or at least censure, and formalize our disapproval? How do they remain enthroned in an age where even well-established corporate partners drip beads of sweat, live on camera when disapproval ratings are appeared?
Because America, the Utopian Goliath, was assaulted by clandestine, infinitesimal forces that it cannot simply invade and `Bring to Justice.' America, so superlative in her omnipotent graces above all other countries, Surely has nothing to loose and certainly can afford to sacrifice a little of her liberty, `For the Future...'
And such went the
purges, and such went the
KGB, and such went the
Gulags before the Soviet Union Fell: So to went that other great
`Utopia,' on the banks of some distant sea.
Theirs crumbled, it is commonly held, and left ours victorious to compromise.
...There are many stones laying about this earth, and many bitter warped minds connected to arms capable of throwing them. We have set our objective on ideological terms and go about its eradication through material means. We seek to grind all mountains of the earth in to pebble, all boulders into sand. The hope is that if, in the future, they are thrown, the wind will lay them gently off their path.
It is the strategic diplomatic equivalent of praying to a broken toaster.
The wind, they fail to recognize, has carved those mountains, the same way in which water paved the beach docked sands. Over Time, Towards the Future, Over billions of years.
How long shall we hold out on `time,' how long will we tolerate unnecessary sacrifice?-- How long can we deny The Present at the benefit of some Utopian Future in which our rights will be granted back to us--
by the hand of some large-hearted benefactor-- once these mountains are ground to rubble?
For a country under two hundred and fifty years of age, it is a peculiar thing indeed to be making such a sacrifice.
What grows and whithers, one might ask, in the span of two-hundred and fifty years?
The Tree of Liberty Grows Ever More Imperiled.
Cross Posted At:
Deny My Freedom.