WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
My Life In the Berkeley Prog MoshPit of the Sixties
byVanderleunonJune 8, 2012
“Won’t look like rain. Won’t look like snow.
Won’t look like fog. That’s all we know.
We just can’t tell you any more.
We’ve never made oobleck before.”
— Dr. Suess, Bartholomew and the Oobleck
Sean Malone begins a predictably tendentious essay, Arguing with Republicans, with a claim I see, read, or hear all the time when people explain why they actually spend time arguing with the colonized minds of the Left. He cites the irritating situation of
“For the last few years, it seems like all I’ve done is debate with leftists, liberals and progressives who’s poor grasp of economics and annoying tendency to support style over substance has turned a good many of them into socialist weasels.”
Weasels they are and weasels they shall be. But they shall only be Socialists while they have a Capitalist system to support their Socialism. Once the Capitalist system can no longer support Socialism all socialists will turn into Communists. Instantly. It will be as if they were only wearing a Socialist skin suit.
These boilerplate leftist claims of ‘economic ignorance’ and ‘style over substance’ are as constant as disclaimers in drug ads. But they are either false or ignorant or both. Grown-up and fully functional LeftLibProgs know economics very well indeed, and never mistake style over substance. If this is actually Sean’s experience he’s 1) shoveling seaweed against the tide, and 2) spending too much time debating with LeftLibProg children.
It’s common for LeftLibProgs to say, in passing and without much feeling, that all their proposed hopeful changes to the economic system of the United States and the developed world is “for the greater good.” But it is not and it never has been that way. It is and it always was “for their greater good.” They also know to the deepest diseased marrow in their bones that their proposals lead to a weakened and, they hope, destroyed America. This is also touted as being “for the greater good,” but again it is always and only “for their greater good.”
I’ve read, known, lived with, talked with and to LeftLibProgs since I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. That phase of my ignorant youth included a whole raft of demented Young Socialists, Latter-Day Wobblies, du Bois Clubs, and seedy Communists right down to the execrable Bettina Aptheker, demented daughter of high-ranking American communists and first cousins Fay Philippa Aptheker and Herbert Aptheker.
Bettina, never an attractive person in body or soul, was a classic LeftLibProg of the era, and she knew her economics down to the last jot and tittle and penny. It was just that her sense of economics all aimed, as LeftLibProg economics always does, to the stealth re-concentration of wealth, the destruction of the USA, and the rise of “The Party.” In this way, even though she is now sunk into the obscurity she so richly deserves, she’s still a poster child for the oobleck of Iron Lung Economics of LeftLibProgism. She’s still selling her scarlet oobleck today because, when it comes to LiftLibProgs, “Once the needle goes in, it never comes out.”
The justification for the destruction of capitalist systems and the United States for Bettina was never “for the greater good,” although she was articulate enough to spin this straw into gold for the kids that listened to her. Instead, it was always for the good of “The Party” which, at that time, included her family pretty much in the way that Saddam Hussain’s economic plan for the future of Iraq centered on his family. LeftLibProgism was then, as it is now, just a gangster’s riff. It always has been anywhere it has been implemented.
Whenever the objection is made that LeftLibProgism has failed everywhere it has been tried, the response is always that it just wasn’t tried on a large enough scale. This is the argument that the cure for bad pop music is to just make it louder. The implied endgame is that only when the entire world is remade in the LeftLibProg model, “world without end always,” will the promised utopia arrive. Hence the wrecking ball of LeftLibProg economics must be swung against the pillars of civilization until the whole structure comes tumbling in upon itself. With help from the scions of greed at the far end of maxi-capitalism this vision currently has a whisper of a hope of actually happening.
This is why the leftprogs here and abroad are so increasingly violent and strident in their demands. Theirs is an economics not based on a rising capitalist tide lifting all boats, but one based on the ancient dictum of Lenin: Who-Whom?
Lenin, with his knack for hortatory pungency, reduced the past and future alike to two pronouns and a question mark: “Who—whom?” No verb was necessary. It meant who would prevail over whom? And the question was largely rhetorical, implying that the answer was never in doubt. Lenin and those who followed him would prevail over “them,” whoever they were. — Communism: The Specter and the Struggle
The LeftLibProgs are not clueless about their economics. They know exactly what Iron Lung Economics do to societies. They wreck them all, every single one, while funneling all wealth to the members of “The Party.” You know, the ones driving their limos in their special lane in the middle of the road; the ones on the private plane far, far overhead that never experience the proctological moment at the airport’s security checkpoint.
Neither are these power-mad insects really about “style over substance.” They are about using the “style over substance” on their chestless and thoughtless acolytes to bring “The Party” into power, and to keep “The Party” in power. Kids and adult-adolescents may think it’s about “The Family of Man” and “the greater good,” but it’s really always and eternally about “Who-Whom?” The leadership of the LeftLibProgs knows their Iron Lung Economics right down to the last pile of ash in the ovens of Auschwitz and the last shattered skull in the muck of The Killing Fields. You’re next.
“The justification for the destruction of all capitalist systems and, in train, the United States for Bettina was never “for the greater good,” although she was articulate enough to spin this straw into gold for the kids that listened to her. Instead it was always for the good of “The Party” which, at that time, included her family pretty much in the way that Saddam Hussain’s economic plan for the future of Iraq centered on his family. LeftLibProgism was then, as it is now, just a gangster play. It always has been anywhere it has been implemented.”
I’ve been saying for a long time that “Communism” is really stealth Monarchy/Aristocracy, and it always was.
DennyOctober 5, 2017, 4:00 PM
Robert Payne wrote a well received biography entitled THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LENIN. The book documents how Lenin, after the revolution, had ordered hundreds of thousands of executions from his desk. He had two statues on each corner of the front of his desk. On one corner a monkey and on the other a human skull. When asked the meaning of his decorations, Lenin always replied, – “The monkey is where I came from and the scull is where I’m going”.
“Evil must come but woe to the man by who it comes.” – Jesus of Nazareth
indyjonesouthereOctober 5, 2017, 5:05 PM
To have such diversity at UCSC while servicing the student population with Bettina AND Angela Davis.
Ron RobertsonOctober 6, 2017, 10:22 PM
Thank you Gerard, thoughtful and well written.
I am close to 65, we were there, we grew up.
They think they did.
RichardMay 7, 2019, 8:45 AM
Everyone of these Socialist/Communist a**holes thinks he/she will be living in the country dacha with unrestricted access to everything the proles have to line up for. They will administer the dehumanizing rules and regulationss, never be subjected to them. Remember comrade: “Sharing is Caring.”
Check this moron out and ask yourself, “If they’re this authoritarian WITH an armed citizenry, what the hell will life be like once the citizenry is dis-armed?” https://tinyurl.com/y36dmx8t
Everyday it seems we get a little closer to discovering what the penultimate straw will be that will precede the camel’s broken back. They appear to really want this. How does one reason with the insane? (rhetorical question).
captfleeMay 7, 2019, 9:40 AM
Gerard,
Outstanding!
Say, is that Malone fellow a bit of a dip, or is it just me?
As ever, I am deeply impressed with the amplitude and sincerity of your conversion. Many of those with whom I grew up remain trapped in the perpetual miasma of leftist conformity, but that may be a function of place as well as time, as the world outside the universities and bureaucracies bubble teaches a rather different type of lesson. It’s not for nothing that the state’s sole D congresscritter, excepting the two from our DOJ mandated Bantustans, represents my hometown.Not that the Rs are any great shakes, mind you. I credit the late Senator H with my inability to swallow the party line, and to realize the danger the hard left posed, poses, and will ever pose, having attentively watched hundreds if not thousands of his pre-Senatorial nightly editorials between the ages of six and eighteen (probably not so much as a child, but frequently as a teen), said period encompassing some mighty lively times for the state and nation, indeed.
Diogenes Lamp,
We are of similar minds. In my weaker moments I fear that we are not just sliding, but being pushed toward a return to feudalism.
ghostsniperMay 7, 2019, 12:54 PM
The communist mandate is to kill everyone that doesn’t agree with them.
Then there will be nobody left but communists.
So who will they steal from?
At it’s base, people that believe in that stuff suffer from the tragic adolescent disease of extreme envy. This disease was caused, starting at an early age (before the age of 7), by their parents and in later years society at large. The cure for this disease, if it can be cured at all, is very harsh and sustained. Absent that, they must be killed before they damage others. They are a most contagious virus, attracted to mainly children, and rebuffed and ridiculed by sane adults. Parenting: it’s how you design and construct an adult and if you fail them by age 7 you have failed them for life.
andreMay 7, 2019, 5:16 PM
As was posted in a quote by Solzhenitsyn a few days ago–men have forgotten God, that is why all this has happened. Devolution into evil.
Dr. JayMay 7, 2019, 6:24 PM
andre,
Just to add a bit to your Solzhenitsyn quote: People have forgotten that God is both loving and righteous, and I fear, it’s gonna be a righteous God we’re about to meet.
Hard to add anything to this excellent article and conversation. Very true that Communism is the endgame of Socialism, and that Commies cannot coexist with any other form of government, anywhere in the world! That’s why it is an internationalist movement.
The why of this inability to coexist is a good question to ask. I always believed it was that the people would see the better life obvious under free market economies and want to migrate there. See: The Berlin Wall.
A larger rationale is needed, though. Another thought I have is that they simply cannot compete intellectually with the doctrine of freedom. This explains the resort to violence. Have you watched the videos, which are endless in number, of the political unrest on the streets of our cities? People from the Right will either rally, conduct interviews, wear red hats with MAGA on them, or whatever, and along come hysterical people from the Left and the idea is to shut down conversation. How ironic. Many times violence ensues, 90% of the time from the Left, or more, and yet the narrative ends up it was the fault of the Righties.
Add to this trend the bald fact that if you don’t announce in polite company your virtue as a Leftie, you are a target.
I don’t know what this isn’t a civil war at some level. The Left are on a war footing.
JackMay 8, 2019, 7:15 AM
As an ardent Nationalist I have never experienced a single moment of anything but contempt and disgust for socialists, communists and muslims. Those mf’ers, like Nazis, are completely unable to live peacefully anywhere on this planet and because they have been permitted to exist and proliferate in practically every nation, the world is sliding toward an abyss from which it will likely never recover.
There is a way to save it but doing so will require a lot of killing.
Yes Jack, you’re quite right. In the end it will require a lot of killing.
The problem will be that the front rank won’t be Che, or Kim or even Bernie. The control we gave the left over the school and colleges means the front rank will be children. Ours and those of people like us.
True Believers who, when they get the numbers will happily vote away everything about this republic we hold dear.
And if it comes to a fight, they will proudly and stupidly march in front with their ‘smart phones’ held high and firing hash-tags fiercely at us. And when that wave passes over us it will sweep everything away. Unless we are prepared to drive a bayonet into Cindy Lou’s guts, twist it, pull it out, reverse and drive the butt into her throat. Saving the ammo for the Dog Soldiers following close behind.
Pray it never comes to that.
MartynWMay 8, 2019, 10:01 PM
Every socialist believes that when the Revolution comes, they’ll be one of the nomenklatura, on the inside of the palace walls, looking out. Leaders who live like billionaires, and the rest of the country? Who cares?
North Korea is not a failed socialist state, it’s a perfected one.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
“Won’t look like rain. Won’t look like snow.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Who? Whom? Them. Us.
I AM, them
Ah, the Revolutionary Vanguard!
“The justification for the destruction of all capitalist systems and, in train, the United States for Bettina was never “for the greater good,” although she was articulate enough to spin this straw into gold for the kids that listened to her. Instead it was always for the good of “The Party” which, at that time, included her family pretty much in the way that Saddam Hussain’s economic plan for the future of Iraq centered on his family. LeftLibProgism was then, as it is now, just a gangster play. It always has been anywhere it has been implemented.”
I’ve been saying for a long time that “Communism” is really stealth Monarchy/Aristocracy, and it always was.
Robert Payne wrote a well received biography entitled THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LENIN. The book documents how Lenin, after the revolution, had ordered hundreds of thousands of executions from his desk. He had two statues on each corner of the front of his desk. On one corner a monkey and on the other a human skull. When asked the meaning of his decorations, Lenin always replied, – “The monkey is where I came from and the scull is where I’m going”.
“Evil must come but woe to the man by who it comes.” – Jesus of Nazareth
To have such diversity at UCSC while servicing the student population with Bettina AND Angela Davis.
Thank you Gerard, thoughtful and well written.
I am close to 65, we were there, we grew up.
They think they did.
Everyone of these Socialist/Communist a**holes thinks he/she will be living in the country dacha with unrestricted access to everything the proles have to line up for. They will administer the dehumanizing rules and regulationss, never be subjected to them. Remember comrade: “Sharing is Caring.”
Check this moron out and ask yourself, “If they’re this authoritarian WITH an armed citizenry, what the hell will life be like once the citizenry is dis-armed?” https://tinyurl.com/y36dmx8t
Everyday it seems we get a little closer to discovering what the penultimate straw will be that will precede the camel’s broken back. They appear to really want this. How does one reason with the insane? (rhetorical question).
Gerard,
Outstanding!
Say, is that Malone fellow a bit of a dip, or is it just me?
As ever, I am deeply impressed with the amplitude and sincerity of your conversion. Many of those with whom I grew up remain trapped in the perpetual miasma of leftist conformity, but that may be a function of place as well as time, as the world outside the universities and bureaucracies bubble teaches a rather different type of lesson. It’s not for nothing that the state’s sole D congresscritter, excepting the two from our DOJ mandated Bantustans, represents my hometown.Not that the Rs are any great shakes, mind you. I credit the late Senator H with my inability to swallow the party line, and to realize the danger the hard left posed, poses, and will ever pose, having attentively watched hundreds if not thousands of his pre-Senatorial nightly editorials between the ages of six and eighteen (probably not so much as a child, but frequently as a teen), said period encompassing some mighty lively times for the state and nation, indeed.
Diogenes Lamp,
We are of similar minds. In my weaker moments I fear that we are not just sliding, but being pushed toward a return to feudalism.
The communist mandate is to kill everyone that doesn’t agree with them.
Then there will be nobody left but communists.
So who will they steal from?
At it’s base, people that believe in that stuff suffer from the tragic adolescent disease of extreme envy. This disease was caused, starting at an early age (before the age of 7), by their parents and in later years society at large. The cure for this disease, if it can be cured at all, is very harsh and sustained. Absent that, they must be killed before they damage others. They are a most contagious virus, attracted to mainly children, and rebuffed and ridiculed by sane adults. Parenting: it’s how you design and construct an adult and if you fail them by age 7 you have failed them for life.
As was posted in a quote by Solzhenitsyn a few days ago–men have forgotten God, that is why all this has happened. Devolution into evil.
andre,
Just to add a bit to your Solzhenitsyn quote: People have forgotten that God is both loving and righteous, and I fear, it’s gonna be a righteous God we’re about to meet.
Hard to add anything to this excellent article and conversation. Very true that Communism is the endgame of Socialism, and that Commies cannot coexist with any other form of government, anywhere in the world! That’s why it is an internationalist movement.
The why of this inability to coexist is a good question to ask. I always believed it was that the people would see the better life obvious under free market economies and want to migrate there. See: The Berlin Wall.
A larger rationale is needed, though. Another thought I have is that they simply cannot compete intellectually with the doctrine of freedom. This explains the resort to violence. Have you watched the videos, which are endless in number, of the political unrest on the streets of our cities? People from the Right will either rally, conduct interviews, wear red hats with MAGA on them, or whatever, and along come hysterical people from the Left and the idea is to shut down conversation. How ironic. Many times violence ensues, 90% of the time from the Left, or more, and yet the narrative ends up it was the fault of the Righties.
Add to this trend the bald fact that if you don’t announce in polite company your virtue as a Leftie, you are a target.
I don’t know what this isn’t a civil war at some level. The Left are on a war footing.
As an ardent Nationalist I have never experienced a single moment of anything but contempt and disgust for socialists, communists and muslims. Those mf’ers, like Nazis, are completely unable to live peacefully anywhere on this planet and because they have been permitted to exist and proliferate in practically every nation, the world is sliding toward an abyss from which it will likely never recover.
There is a way to save it but doing so will require a lot of killing.
Yes Jack, you’re quite right. In the end it will require a lot of killing.
The problem will be that the front rank won’t be Che, or Kim or even Bernie. The control we gave the left over the school and colleges means the front rank will be children. Ours and those of people like us.
True Believers who, when they get the numbers will happily vote away everything about this republic we hold dear.
And if it comes to a fight, they will proudly and stupidly march in front with their ‘smart phones’ held high and firing hash-tags fiercely at us. And when that wave passes over us it will sweep everything away. Unless we are prepared to drive a bayonet into Cindy Lou’s guts, twist it, pull it out, reverse and drive the butt into her throat. Saving the ammo for the Dog Soldiers following close behind.
Pray it never comes to that.
Every socialist believes that when the Revolution comes, they’ll be one of the nomenklatura, on the inside of the palace walls, looking out. Leaders who live like billionaires, and the rest of the country? Who cares?
North Korea is not a failed socialist state, it’s a perfected one.