Marxism In America

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By LTC (Ret) Charlie Bass, MS, PhD, MD, FAIS

This is an article from the Fall 2021 issue of Combat Stress

The last several weeks have seen tumultuous upsets in global power shifts, public perception of political figures, and worldwide population stability. The violence in Afghanistan following the pullout of Coalition Forces has left a deep rift in those who “had a dog in the fight,” such as this writer did in 2012-2013 at Camp Sabalu-Harrison in Bagram. It has also ushered in a lack of faith in political leadership that leaves many Americans and members of the Free World reeling. While a slow solemn, ceremonial salute goes out to those whose lives were lost in Afghanistan, attention must be given to matters perhaps not as luminous, but still pressing for those concerned.

My wife’s friend called last month from Washington State, where she was thinking of leaving. She explained that people on the side of the road and on freeway overpasses are throwing things at motorists and incidents have gone well beyond cotton balls and paper tissue. In 161 incidents across King County, items thrown include shopping carts, chairs, cinder blocks, and propane tanks.1 She went on to say that, since the protests surrounding the last presidential election, such incidents – and numerous other crimes – have been common and, “…Seattle just isn’t the same.” Thousands of people live alongside the I-5 and I-90 interstate highways in tents. She wants to leave the west coast (her rise in car insurance premiums alone would have been enough to motivate her) and move to Texas and its right-leaning conservativism. This is hardly uncommon, but many established Texans are becoming weary of people leaving leftist, liberal states that have depleted themselves of funding while allowing crime to rage rampant, establishing residency in Texas, then voting for the same profiles of liberal, leftist candidates they chose that got the west coast in their mess in the first place. It has led to popular merchandizing of the slogan, “Don’t California my Texas.”

Meanwhile, we see protestors in Cuba calling for greater freedoms in the regime of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s communist authoritarianism. Shortages in gas, electricity, medical supplies, and vaccines have been cited and protests quickly turned violent and lethal after security forces were ordered to disperse the protestors.2 Only 90 miles away in Florida, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar – whose parents were Cuban exiles – noted that the island’s government responded by shutting off the Internet to better control the information that the 11 million island residents receive.2

Black Lives Matter, ever ready to exploit the incident for their own unabashedly and avowedly Marxist means, has condemned the people of the United States for Cuba’s economic struggles.2 In their spin on the matter, U.S. economic and supply embargoes are the central cause of Cuba’s woes and BLM is ready and willing to show solidarity with their communist allies. BLM has not commented on why they assign no blame whatsoever to China for failing to help their communist brethren. Finally, it looks like the American people are waking up to realize the truth about the Black Lives Matter organization and their hidden agenda.

China’s history saw strong condemnation of capitalist imperialism with Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book (1964),3 in which he denounces capitalism over 30 times and imperialism over 70 times. The irony is that China is now on the brink of colonizing throughout the Caribbean through capitalist means to fund, fuel, and further Chinese imperialism (starting with the Chinese invasion and annexation of Tibet in October of 1950). Jamaica has received JMD $88 billion (roughly US $570 million) in Chinese loans for infrastructure development. The worry of many – and not unfounded – is that, should Jamaica falter on their loan (an all-but-inevitable outcome), China will seize key economic areas of the island.4 The phrase “Chinese colonialism” seems a hot topic on the Internet at the moment, but the idea of loaning money at interest is central to capitalism, which makes many wonder if China will have to turn its back on Chairman Mao if they continue bank loans. Expanding a country’s borders is the very heart of imperialism, leaving us imagining what Chairman Mao would say if he could see such behavior among his comrades today, with over 200 Chinese fishing boats anchoring in a show of dominance over Whitsun Reef near the Philippines in April5 as well as the legacy of the Spratly Islands midway between Brunei, Vietnam, and the Philippines, which have been the subject of aggressive Chinese land-grabbing and reclamation since at least 1995.

In any case, communism is founded on the belief of communal ownership of all property. Why is Cuba not being aided by the other communist countries of China, Laos, and Vietnam? Is there no inter-dependence of communist nations? The question reaches relevance when considering these words from Karl Marx, Father of Communism:

“It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.”6

The reader will please keep in mind that the ultimate goal of communism is world domination. However, the ideology of communism is a failure. President Ronald Reagan was quoted to say from the podium,

“Two Russians are walking down the street, and one says, ‘Comrade, have we reached the highest state of communism?’

‘Oh, no,” the other replies.’ ‘Things are going to get a lot worse.'”7

Only slightly better is the oft-repeated joke from the liberal politicians:

“Well, that wasn’t TRUE communism.”

Another idea of Marx was that communism starts with the education of children. His words were:

“All children will be educated in state establishments from the time when they can do without the first maternal care.”8

Doing without maternal care is one way of saying the family would be abolished and the children would become instruments of the state. To put it another way:

“The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement (private gain and ownership of property) vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”9

To this must be put forward the wise words of this writer’s great-grandmother, Mrs. Jessie Kenan Wilder Jones, writing in a 1934 letter to her daughters, “No nation can rise above her families.” Karl Marx would have found a worthy debate in her domestic policies.

While agendas of communist education have been slowly creeping into American society, it does seem one positive effect of the quarantine was to put education back into the home through online schooling. Parents were finally getting a taste of what their children were being told by the educators of our society.10 The gist of it seems to boil down to some educators spending more time on leftist social justice agendas than on education.

That, of course, is a warm-up for the natural course of a decades-long river of revisionist history leading to the new buzzword of American education: Critical Race Theory.

Exactly what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is and what it means to the classrooms of our nation seem to be different things. However, most will agree the core of CRT is, “…that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.”11 So, racial minorities have faced and continue to face exploitation and oppression from a racial majority. This is in keeping with the Hegelian-Marxist notion that there is one class of oppressors and one class of the oppressed.12 As such, it plays upon – and further creates – a rift in society, painting one group of people as victims while demonizing another group, the divisions all being made along racial lines.

Surely this writer’s head is not the only one shaking and askance. Demonizing a group of people based on skin color? That could never have any harmful effect, could it?

Also, it gives a picture of the world around us while looking through a straw. The theory seems to state that the White American majority (76 percent of the U.S. population)13 has some non-specific, amorphous privilege while the Black American minority (less than 14 percent of the U.S. population)13 is kept underprivileged. In order for the CRT idea to work, one must state that any non-White race is automatically underprivileged.

To this narrative, mention should be made of Wadie P. Deddeh. Having been born in Baghdad and raised Chaldean, he left Iraq when he was just shy of his 27th birthday in 1947 and came by ship to New York. He settled first in Detroit. As a Chaldean (an Aramaic Christian minority totaling less than three percent of the population of Iraq), he faced discrimination in his native Iraq and in the United States. However, by educating himself and putting himself in a position to work and solve the issues of the day, he became the first Iraqi-American elected as a state senator and is credited with creating the California Department of Transportation in 1972.14, 15

The adherents of CRT surely find Senator Deddeh’s story…inconvenient. As a minority of a minority, the CRT model predicts he would have come to no good end in the United States, but he rose to prominence and his work proved beneficial to millions. Note that an additional corollary of CRT is that White Americans are predicted to succeed, but the reality is that over nine percent – in the neighborhood of 21 million – of White Americans are living below the poverty level.16

Even the young people of our nation are catching onto the idea that political programming has no place in federally funded schools. Brad Taylor is a high school student in District 196 south of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who chastised the administration in a school board meeting recently, saying his school, “…is quickly becoming a place where promoting activism is actually more important than promoting education.”17

Is it clear how CRT bids people to look at We the People of the United States through a straw? It seems the very antithesis of the Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King’s words, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”18

Please let each century show that we were wiser than the century before.

Again, mainstream media with its set-piece agenda of yellow journalism must take credit here. There are some who believe what they see in the news whole-heartedly, but this writer is not listed in that group. Having been in the middle of news stories more than a few times in over five decades – and having trained and worked as a journalist – there is often a wide separation between the actual event and what gets reported in the news. Readers will please continue to evaluate media reports with a critical eye and question the story. Are facts being presented or is it an editorial article? This writer produces a mixture of the two. Are both sides of a story being presented? The endeavor here is to try and find the under-represented side of the coin. Is the editor picking the news to suit his tastes? For example, when a big news story like the debacle in Afghanistan comes out, does the editor instead put a heavy focus on celebrity break-ups and babies? Remember that journalists work for an editor who tells them what the story will be. Articles that do not meet the company model will be rejected.

Accordingly, it was surprising to this writer to see even CNN reporting that Americans are losing faith in President Biden’s administration,19 leaving this writer to wonder if reporters such as Harry Enten may be out of work soon as he weaves a story that is hardly a good fit with liberal news media.

So, when a reporter sees an event that is a poor fit for the model, a common reporter’s tactic is to label this B-side of the album “propaganda.” An example would be when former President Trump was awake at 3:00 am to greet returning hostages; reporters labeled the event as an exploitative measure of President Trump to curry political gain.20

On the other side of the Big Yellow Machine, reporters politely covered the bloody pullout from Afghanistan and President Biden refusing questions from reporters before he returned to his vacation.21 One might hypothesize what the media would have done to President Biden had he been a Republican.

WE THE PEOPLE were not amused. In the words of Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, “Our President is demonstrating weak and pathetic leadership and WE THE PEOPLE are tired of it” (emphasis added, but the pastor received a tumultuous applause from the 5,000-plus congregation).22 Our ability to think for ourselves – rather than simply consuming what is fed to us – is a hallmark of the American mind. To put it another way, as may be found etched into the original main building of the Central Intelligence Agency in McLean, Virginia (and at the insistence of Director Allen Dulles), “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”23

https://www.stress.org/marxism-in-america

References

  1. Combos, Lucas (2021). “161 Rock-Throwing Cases Reported In King County; WSP Makes Arrest” Patch Media, Monday, July 12, 2021. https://patch.com/washington/seattle/161-rock-throwing-cases-reported-king-county-wsp-makes-arrest Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  2. Phillips, Jack (2021). “’Down with Dictatorship’: Thousands of Cubans Demonstrate Against Communist Regime,” Epoch Times, July 11, 2021. https://www.theepochtimes.com/down-with-dictatorship-thousands-of-cubans-demonstrate-against-communist-regime_3896959.html Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  3. Zedong, Mao (1966). Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (a.k.a. “Little Red Book), Peking Foreign Languages Press. N.B. – the Romanization of the late chairman’s name has shifted over the years.
  4. TeachDem (2020). “The Colonization of Jamaica by China,” Youtube.com https://youtu.be/ADVLepq9nhY, Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  5. Puri, Samir, and Austin, Greg (2021). “What the Whitsun Reef incident tells us about China’s future operations at sea.” International Institute for Strategic Studies, April 9, 2021. https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2021/04/whitsun-reef-incident-china, Retrieved August 29, 2021.
  6. Marx, Karl, and Engles, Frederick (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, pg. 50. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  7. Roberts, Steve V. (1987). “Washington Talk; Reagan and the Russians: The Joke’s on Them.” New York Times, August 21, 1987, Sec. A, Pg. 1.
  8. Marx, Karl, and Engles, Frederick (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, pg. 40. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  9. Marx, Karl, and Engles, Frederick (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, pg. 24. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  10. Dice, Mark (2021). “Young Students Roast Their Liberal Teachers at School Board Meeting” June 23, 2021. https://youtu.be/jItys5xsIwM, Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  11. Sawchuck, Stephen (2021). “What is Critical Race Theory, and Why is it Under Attack?” Education Week, May 18, 2021. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05, Retrieved August 11, 2021.
  12. Hegel, G. W. F. (1999). “The German Constitution (1798–1802)”. In Dickey, Lawrence; Nisbet, H. B. (eds.). Hegel: Political Writings. Translated by Nisbet, H. B. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 6–101.
  13. United States Census Bureau Quick Facts https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219, Retrieved August 11, 2021.
  14. Deddeh, Wadie P., and Sheridan, Linda E. (2019). Only in America: An Immigrant’s Success Story. Bloomington, IN:
  15. Wilkens, John (2019). “Wadie Deddeh, longtime state legislator, dies at 98.” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 30, 2019. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/obituaries/story/2019-08-30/wadie-deddeh-longtime-state-legislator-dies-at-98, Retrieved August 29, 2021.
  16. Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2019. September 15, 2020. Release Number CB20-145. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/income-poverty.html, Retrieved August 29, 2021.
  17. Dice, Mark (2021). “Young Students Roast Their Liberal Teachers at School Board Meeting” June 23, 2021. https://youtu.be/jItys5xsIwM Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  18. “I Have A Dream’ Speech, In Its Entirety,” National Public Radio, January 18, 2021, Heard on Talk of the Nation, hosted by Rebecca Roberts in Washington. https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety, Retrieved August 11, 2021.
  19. Enten, Harry (2021). “It’s not just Afghanistan – Americans are losing faith in Biden on many issues.” CNN Politics, Saturday, August 28, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/28/politics/biden-afghanistan-polling-analysis/index.html, Retrieved August 28, 2021.
  20. Rohde, David (2018). “Why did Donald Trump welcome American prisoners home on live TV?” New Yorker, May 18, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-did-donald-trump-welcome-american-prisoners-home-on-live-tv Retrieved August 28, 2021.
  21. Liptak, Kevin; Zeleny, Jeff; Collins, Kaitlan; Hansler, Jennifer; Vazquez, Maegan (2021). “Biden admits Afghanistan’s collapse ‘did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.'” CNN Politics, Monday, August 16, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/16/politics/biden-afghanistan-speech/index.html Retrieved August 28, 2021.
  22. Livestream broadcast of the 8:30 a.m. service from Cornerstone Church with remarks from Pastor John Hagee. Sunday, August 29, 2021. jhm.org, Retrieved August 29, 2021.
  23. King James Bible, Book of John, chapter 8, verse 32. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+8&version=KJV, Retrieved August 29, 2021.
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