Segue: Q&A with Red-Ken
(Ok, ordinarily I would use this space to put a caveat on my post to indicate how I am not a communist and this is merely an exercise in humor, sadly it is much harder sometimes to lampoon politics in general in some cases. So I will say that in this case, though I do not claim to be a communist, many of the opinions below are actually my opinions! It just so happens that a proper communist point of view happens to coincide with what most people agree with in this case. Purely coincidental I assure you. Either that or there are some things in the human condition that are hopefully universal)
Segue: a bit of Q&A with Red Ken
My mailbag is not overflowing so much, in fact there aren’t too many electrons to knock around together at all in my electronic inbox. So I will mingle questions for a bit while I wait for the inflow to pick up. For the sake of fairness I will not reveal which is which and reserve the right to shorten some of them to strike to the heart of the matter:
The first ones a doozey and I almost thought about giving it a whole day. “Red Ken, Aren’t you ashamed of talking up communism when most of them have been brutal and despotic.”
The short answer is: Yes, I am ashamed with the legacy of most of the countries that have claimed (falsely) the mantle of communism.
From the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, to the absolute police state of North Korea, the purges of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the acts against student protestors and Tibet by the Chinese sicken and disgust me, as they should any free thinking people. I will not hesitate to point them out as well as the other ways in which these countries failed the beauty of a consensual state of equality and fairness. I would also freely and openly point out the flaws in more benign left leaning leaders such as that fossil Castro and the mistakes of Hugo Chavez when it is merited (and not merely the invention of the New York Times)
But I feel equal shame and disgust for the crimes of my own nation which include, but are not limited to: The near destruction of and very real genocide against the indigenous peoples that were on this continent before us and the unanswered theft that has gone on to this day; the wholesale murder in the Philippine front of the Spanish-American war, the sordid history of chattel slavery of an entire group of people as well as the lynching, murder, intimidation, disenfranchisement, and sanctioned medical experimentation on those same people at Tuskegee; and of course our crimes against democracy itself when we nullified elections and created coups in Chile, Iran, El Salvador, Uruguay, Cambodia, Haiti, Bolivia, and the Congo.
I believe we should take responsibility first for what we are most responsible for and because these atrocities were carried out by the very country that I grew up in and live in I feel a greater responsibility for those crimes than I do those of foreign lands. In fact the troubles of the killing fields of Cambodia were actually made more probable by our attempts to create the government of our choice rather than accept the government that made choices we did not like. Prince Sahounek, who kept his country and people out of the war in Viet Nam, was knocked out in 1970 in favor of a puppet who threw his people into the sausage grinder. Were it not for the violence and chaos violent opposition groups like the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power. The replacement of the democratic and left leaning government of Iran with the Shah and his SAVAK secret police resulted in murder and intimidation and destruction of the secular democratic people there. This left the only resistance against him in the hands of radical religious zealots.
Wow, alright my comrades, maybe I will extend the Q&A a bit longer and let it bleed into Thursday as well. I promise I will try to keep the questions and answers a bit more contemporary and positive.
Segue: a bit of Q&A with Red Ken
My mailbag is not overflowing so much, in fact there aren’t too many electrons to knock around together at all in my electronic inbox. So I will mingle questions for a bit while I wait for the inflow to pick up. For the sake of fairness I will not reveal which is which and reserve the right to shorten some of them to strike to the heart of the matter:
The first ones a doozey and I almost thought about giving it a whole day. “Red Ken, Aren’t you ashamed of talking up communism when most of them have been brutal and despotic.”
The short answer is: Yes, I am ashamed with the legacy of most of the countries that have claimed (falsely) the mantle of communism.
From the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, to the absolute police state of North Korea, the purges of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the acts against student protestors and Tibet by the Chinese sicken and disgust me, as they should any free thinking people. I will not hesitate to point them out as well as the other ways in which these countries failed the beauty of a consensual state of equality and fairness. I would also freely and openly point out the flaws in more benign left leaning leaders such as that fossil Castro and the mistakes of Hugo Chavez when it is merited (and not merely the invention of the New York Times)
But I feel equal shame and disgust for the crimes of my own nation which include, but are not limited to: The near destruction of and very real genocide against the indigenous peoples that were on this continent before us and the unanswered theft that has gone on to this day; the wholesale murder in the Philippine front of the Spanish-American war, the sordid history of chattel slavery of an entire group of people as well as the lynching, murder, intimidation, disenfranchisement, and sanctioned medical experimentation on those same people at Tuskegee; and of course our crimes against democracy itself when we nullified elections and created coups in Chile, Iran, El Salvador, Uruguay, Cambodia, Haiti, Bolivia, and the Congo.
I believe we should take responsibility first for what we are most responsible for and because these atrocities were carried out by the very country that I grew up in and live in I feel a greater responsibility for those crimes than I do those of foreign lands. In fact the troubles of the killing fields of Cambodia were actually made more probable by our attempts to create the government of our choice rather than accept the government that made choices we did not like. Prince Sahounek, who kept his country and people out of the war in Viet Nam, was knocked out in 1970 in favor of a puppet who threw his people into the sausage grinder. Were it not for the violence and chaos violent opposition groups like the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power. The replacement of the democratic and left leaning government of Iran with the Shah and his SAVAK secret police resulted in murder and intimidation and destruction of the secular democratic people there. This left the only resistance against him in the hands of radical religious zealots.
Wow, alright my comrades, maybe I will extend the Q&A a bit longer and let it bleed into Thursday as well. I promise I will try to keep the questions and answers a bit more contemporary and positive.