The New York Times to The Defense

This is how the "New York Times" runs interference for communism.  Hugo Chavez was not a "leftist populist", whatever that is.  He was a plain vanilla, garden variety communist, like Bernie Sanders.

Chavez admired the murderer Che Guevara, he believed "the military should act in the interests of the working classes when the ruling classes were perceived as corrupt" (the ruling classes are always "perceived" corrupt, unless they are communists), and he founded the "Fifth Republic Movement" political party which merged with the "United Socialist Party of Venezuela", which Chavez also led.  Hugo Chavez was friends with Fidel Castro and other communists in Latin America, and he despised Augusto Pinochet and the United States.

Finally, consider what Chavez actually did while in power.  He nationalized "key" industries and created "participatory democratic Communal Councils".  Oh, what's that?  Participatory democratic Communal Councils are soviets.  Soviets, or workers councils, are just good, old fashion Trotskyism.

Honestly, you really don't have to go through the weeds of socialist theory, and the historical record on Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.  All you have to know is that Venezuela, one of the world's largest exporters of oil, suffers from chronic shortages of gasoline and electric power, in addition to shortages of all other kinds, like food and medicine.  Shortages are the hallmark of socialism.  Socialism fabricates shortages.

Of course, other political economies can suffer shortages from time to time.  Shortages can arise naturally from floods, droughts, earthquakes, pestilence, or whatever "acts of god".  There was, for example, the famous Irish potato famine, caused by the potato blight.  Only socialist countries manufacture shortages.

For example, between 1958 and 1962, about 50 MILLION Chinese STARVED TO DEATH in the greatest MAN MADE famine known to history.  No drought, no flood, no earthquake, no pestilence, no infestations, nothing.  They died of socialism.  Starting in the late 19th century, colonial Rhodesia was the breadbasket of Africa.  Robert Mugabe transformed post-colonial Rhodesia into communist Zimbabwe and turned a "breadbasket into a basket case".  One could go on.  And on, and on, and on.

Socialism manufactures shortages from the large and consequential, like shortages of food and medicines, to the sort of minor shortages that just grind down your will to live, like shortages of fresh fruit, toilet paper, sugar, soap, etc.

Any time you hear of shortages, absent some "act of god" the most reasonable assumption is that socialism is at work.  For a domestic example, there was no housing shortage in New York City or any other major American city, until price controls were imposed on rents.  Today, New Yorkers have the pleasure of paying inflated prices for inferior housing, if they can find housing.  This is the inevitable result of price controls, a standard socialist practice.

When Hugo Chavez assumed power in 1999, I predicted shortages.  Of course, I did not know exactly when or exactly how, but I knew shortages were coming.  And so it is.  Venezuela was no paradise before Hugo Chavez, and the people were desperate to improve their lives.  Too bad for them, they got communism, instead.

The New York Times knows all this.  So, why do they try to misdirect their readers ("Oh, look!  A leftist populist!")?  Because, dear reader, they are communists.  They will misdirect you on Venezuela and they will misdirect you on Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and on any other person and on any other subject to further the cause of the Revolution.

For the New York Times as for every communist revolutionary, "The issue is never the issue.  The issue is always the Revolution."

It's The Martians, Stupid

Every once in a while a curtain parts, a mask falls, a slip shows, and you catch a glimpse of inner works.

I remember one such moment, many years ago at the dawn of "Nightline", the then innovative late evening news show on the ABC TV network.  Ted Koppel was trying to get his guest to explain some technical point in a certain way but was getting no satisfaction.  The guest simply did not understand how he was to answer.  Finally, an exasperated Koppel blurted out, "How would you explain this to an 8th grader?"  A revealing comment.

Most public discourse works at a very low intellectual level.  For example, during my childhood, The New York Times was famously written at the 8th grade reading level, and this self-styled newspaper of record is supposed to be for educated adults.  It is a mark of our degenerate age that these days the NY Times is said to be written at the 10th grade reading level.  This is consonant with other measures of school effectiveness that document a two grade level decline from approximately 1985 to 2000 (I tremble to think what has transpired since then).

And if you still think I overstate my case, I invite you to read some of the ethnic papers, like the "NY Post" or---brace yourself---"The Amsterdam News".  During the Tawana Brawley Hoax, circa 1990, I made a point of regularly reading both "The Amsterdam News" and the now defunct "City Sun" (not to be confused with the "NY Sun" newspaper).  Try a newspaper like those, for a bit, and you will understand everything there is to understand about my pessimism regarding American democracy.

So, last night I heard a snippet of a radio broadcast in which David Brooks, the putative conservative commentator for the NY Times, was remarking upon the Democratic Party convention.  If a Martian had observed both Democratic and Republican conventions, Brooks was saying, he would suppose that the Democrats are the more patriotic party.

What an odd comment, I thought.  Why a Martian?  The only sense I can make of this observation is that Brooks is assuming that a Martian does not bring with him any intellectual baggage.  Put another way, a Martian, if such a creature existed, would not actually know anything about the political parties or, indeed, anything about American society or American history.

And that, I think, reveals much.  Modern American politics is a Theater of The Absurd for an ignorant electorate.  If you have a better explanation for how we have come to this:  Donald Trump leading the Republican Party and---it's hard to write this---Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic Party, I would dearly love to hear it.

And if you do not have a better explanation, then you must accept Brooks's comment as yet more evidence for the end of democracy as we have known it.

The NY Times Comes Out of The Closet (again)

Socialists are exquisitely attuned to history.  When Donald Trump declared that his foreign and trade policies will be organized around the principle of "America First", the Left was quick to pounce, making the connection between Trump and the "notorious" America First Committee.  Started in 1940, the AFC was isolationist (anti-globalist, in modern parlance) and, by association with Charles Lindbergh, faintly racist and White Supremacist, if not actually sympathetic to the Nazi cause.  This was an arcane connection even I did not make, and I am more historically literate than the average American (a very low bar, so I am hardly bragging).  So, what are we to make of the NY Times editorial, "President Obama and the Long March"?

Does the phrase, "Long March", sound familiar to you?  It should.  Google "Long March" and the very first item to pop up, and rightly so, is the Wikipedia article about the heroic military retreat of the Red Army, under Mao Zedong.  Passing through some of the most difficult terrain in China, over the course of a year Mao took his army more than 9,0000 kilometers (about 5,400 miles) to evade the Kuomintang, leave China to the tender mercies of Imperial Japan, and remain intact to fight, not the Japanese of course, but the Nationalists after they had been severely weakened in their mortal struggle with Japan.  Rather than find common cause with the Nationalists to defend China, Mao sacrificed millions of his countrymen in order to enhance his ability to take over China after the Western powers defeated Japan (with no help from him).

For a generation afterwards, most of the power hierarchy of Maoist China was populated by the likes of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, comrades of Mao in that arduous enterprise.

The next time we encounter the phrase "Long March" is with Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937).  Gramsci developed the theory of "Cultural Hegemony", later aptly nicknamed "The Long March Through The Institutions".  Probably the most realistic and practical thinker among the socialists, Gramsci realized much earlier than his socialist friends that they will never win against society via a marxist-style, mano-a-mano Class Struggle.  Rather, the right strategy is that of the Glyptapanteles wasp, which lays her eggs inside the body of a paralyzed but still living caterpillar.  Over a brief time, the eggs hatch and the wasp larvae eat their way out of the caterpillar, leaving behind a dead husk.

In other words, forget about Class Struggle.  Rather, take over the schools, the universities, the government bureaucracies and other appointed positions of public service.  Inject yourself into the institutions and, in this way, gradually transmogrify society into socialism.

How real is the Democratic Party's connection to Antonio Gramsci?  Here is Anita Dunn, erstwhile communications director for Barack, telling us that one of her favorite political philosophers is the mass murder Mao Zedong.  Van Jones, Barack's erstwhile Green Jobs Tsar is a self-avowed communist.  For all his protestations to the contrary, Barack speaks in the lingo of socialism (redistribution, positive rights, radical transformation).  And, finally (but not exclusively), one of the most important figures in recent Democratic Party politics is the socialist Bernie Sanders.

Donald Trump's connection to the America First Committee is illusory.  Barack Obama's and the NY Times' connection to Karl Marx is not.

The Limits of Panditry

Ooh!  A swing and a miss!  Just when I think the NY Times pandit, Nicholas Kristof, has finally caught a clue, he strikes out looking.  Early in his essay on the Saudi funding of terrorism, Kristoff writes,

"For decades, Saudi Arabia has recklessly financed and promoted a harsh and intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam around the world in a way that is, quite predictably, producing terrorists."

Reckless?  Well, if it's so obvious to Kristof, why can't the Saudis see it?  Are they stupid people?  Or, is it not more likely the Saudis know exactly what they are doing?  Is it not more likely they understand it much better than Kristof?  Later in his essay, Kristof clearly shows he is out of his depth,

"It’s particularly dispiriting because much of the extremist funding seems to come from charity: One of the most admirable aspects of Islam is its emphasis on charity, yet in countries like Saudi Arabia this money is directed not to fight malnutrition or child mortality, but to brainwash children and sow conflict in poor and unstable countries."

Krisof is referring to the "Five Pillars of Islam":  the credo, prayer, charity, Ramadan fast, and pilgrimage to Mecca.  But, if your knowledge of Islam comes from Wikipedia, there is no way to know that Muslim charity is not the same as Christian charity.

In fact, Islam is generally sympathetic to charity, but not all charity satisfies the requirement of "zakat".  For charity to satisfy the Muslim requirement, it must satisfy a Muslim objective;  it must advance Islam.  Thus, giving charity to relieve the suffering of poor Jews is laudatory, but it does not discharge the religious obligation.  Giving money to support dawah (prosyletizing) will do that.  Giving money to support jihad (holy war) will do that.

Thus, giving money to relieve the suffering of Jewish poor is good.  Giving money to support the killing of a Jewish girl in her own bed is better.  And if Nicholas Kristof studied more, he would be surprised less.