I loved Niall Ferguson’s initial article in The Free Press about how very Soviet our once free nation has become (just as Khrushchev predicted). But I was blown out of the water by Helen Andrews’ response to it in The American Conservative.
Her assertion is that Ferguson missed a lot of the really bad stuff. For example, on the economy, she points to hugely bloated sectors that produce little real benefit to our society in comparison to the vast amount of money poured into them. Health care and higher education, she says, “are neither capitalist nor socialist but mutant combinations of the worst of each.” She concludes,
The essence of a late Soviet economy is not that the state plays a big role. It is that the average citizen looks around and thinks, This can’t possibly continue forever. The whole system is fake and insane.
Andrews also notes that the most Soviet aspect of DEI is not merely that it is an ideology that delivers the opposite of what it promises (as Ferguson pointed out), but rather that it will end up destroying American functionality (as thoroughly—I insert—as Lysenkoism destroyed Soviet agriculture):
[I]n 50 years the average American will no longer be able to count on his doctor being able to perform basic medical procedures or his plane not falling out of the sky. It will take decades for these results to manifest, of course, but they are the inevitable result of the decline in standards […].
Even though we don’t (yet) have the bare shelves that marked the Soviet retail system, Andrews points to the fact that, in many cities, stores have to keep even basic products locked up to protect against ever-more-flagrant shoplifting. And our ideologically captured citizens make the same kinds of excuses Soviet citizens made.
[T]he average Soviet citizen knew perfectly well that his consumer goods were inferior to America’s but had soothing excuses to reassure himself why his system was nevertheless superior.
[….]
If a foreigner pointed out these problems [with the American shopping experience] and told you things were better where he came from, in Moscow or Beijing or Dubai, would you have a reply? Answers could be given to all of the above criticisms. Annoyances can be justified as the unfortunate cost of some worthier goal. But as you ponder the tradeoffs that might justify your city’s dysfunctions, stop occasionally and ponder whether your justifications are more convincing than the lady in Izvestia’s.
One thing Andrews misses (and Ferguson touched on only in passing) is the capture of our Legacy Media by the ruling ideologues. No example is more blatant than a New York Times editor seeking to give Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer veto power over an editorial written by Republican Senator Tim Scott. If not for the internet and the rise of alternative media sources, the MSM would have the same hold over “truth” that Pravda (the official Soviet newspaper) had. And as “The Twitter Files” and investigations into Facebook have revealed, our ruling ideologues are already attempting to silence internet voices that disagree with them.
Also, as you saw yesterday (if you read yesterday’s JiP), enough of our population has adopted the Leftist ideology to make it dangerous to resist it in any public venue where Leftists are in the majority. You’re not getting sent to the gulag yet, but you may get beaten up or lose your job through Cancelation.
Unfortunately, our problem now is the same one faced by the failing Soviet Union. Andrews again:
That is the real late Soviet predicament: Everyone can see the disaster coming, yet no one seems to have the power to stop it.
Thoughts?
Common sense has left the country.
There’s a story in the Idaho daily mistaken, our leftist McClatchy rag, about how libraries around the state are in a tizzy to comply with the new state law that says people can challenge the placement of materials for children and young people. Oh the horror of it all. What to do what to do.
And the overlying theme is the far right is just awful, I mean seriously, how can books showing pictures of how a boy can suck off another boys penis not be appropriate for children? Why oh why do they have to be shielded from such important information?
When their reaction could be should be - you know, these books should not be out in the open. Maybe they shouldn’t be in the library using tax money at all but if parents want their kids to see them, they can buy them.
No common sense at all.
This was a very trenchant post - kudos Celia!
My pet peeve is the "health care" industry. Doctors more trained in DEI than medicine. Big pharma peddling dangerous products and products designed to combat the "diseases" caused by our horrible diets. And big insurance, with overpaid CEOs, selling bogus, expensive plans that cover almost nothing. This all has to be re-thought. Nothing but a giant kleptocracy that harms working Americans.