Havel's anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women's rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.That’s right; you can’t accomplish any of these things without the benefit of a police state. Which just goes to show how ungrateful the masses are, incidentally. So ungrateful that communist regimes literally have to fence them in to keep them from escaping to capitalist hell holes - for their own good, mind you.
(H/T: Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom)
Now, I’m not saying that communism hasn’t produced a few prodigies. For example, we are just now learning what a fabulous athlete the late Kim Jong Il was:
Despite the minor obstacle of, you know, zero coaching or course experience, Kim used his divine powers -- he was, after all, officially known as both the Glorious General Who Descended From Heaven and the Ever-Victorious Iron-Willed Commander -- to piece together an exquisite round of 38 for 18 holes at Pyongyang’s 7,700-yard championship course.Even this feat was not really that big a deal, though. I mean, have you ever seen the Pyongyang golf course? Check out the fourth hole.
The feat included five magnificent holes-in-one and it appears that Kim subsequently decided his 31-under-par achievement was enough to solidify his legacy and rarely played afterwards. Perhaps for the sake of our perception of golf’s legend, it is just as well. Jack Nicklaus’ career hole-in-one tally of 20 seems humble by comparison, and had Kim continued at his early pace, he would have surpassed the Golden Bear within a week.
They’re all like that. Five holes-in-one? Sounds like an off day, to me.
Update:
(H/T: Don Surber)
Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.
ReplyDeleteSure. A moldy potato in every pot, a pair of mismatched shoes once every five or six or ten years, and a third of your life spent waiting in line in the snow for same.
WV: julip - just because I couldn't waste a wv like that.
Havel's anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women's rights.
ReplyDeleteThat cretinous communist forgot to mention 100 million dead people.
Well, Stalin did say "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic," so perhaps Mr. Clark was thinking that 100 million is merely a bigger statistic.
Which would be in line with his twisted, demented mind.
TW: glorist. Not me, that Guardian Stalinist Stooge is tooting the glories of communism.
If the fourth is typical of the Pyongyang golf course, then a hole in one would be the way to go.
ReplyDeleteWith the way that green is manicured, putting would be a bear.
Too bad our Dear Leader couldn't have met their Dear Leader for a round of golf. One truly "for the ages", I'm sure.
Well, that's just the rough, you can see the fairway in the top right of the picture. Even more heroic-all of the holes-in-one were on par fives!
ReplyDeleteWatched out for the economic needs of the masses. What garbage. It watched out for the needs of the political class. The ordinary citizen waited in line for hours for stale bread, when it was in stock. If you were a member of the ruling class you could walk into the Communist Party store and buy anything you wanted. His assertions are simply incredible.
Has he been to North Korea or Cuba lately?
Deborah Leigh said... Wonder why people who are so "well cared for" in Communist countries are willing to risk their life to get out to non-Communist countries? Maybe Mr. Clark would like to answer that, or perhaps interview those that fled. Naw. Too brain dead.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago, one of the young pups at work tried to go on about the glories of Communism. Little did he know that Steve was a Hungarian who lived through it. Steve informed him of the truth.
This is the reason critical thinking should be taught.
Deborah,
ReplyDeleteTo the people who teach in our schools and universitiies, critical thinking means parroting the leftist line, like that Guardianista in Paco's post. Anybody who actually thinks critically (in the traditional sense of the word "critical") is immediately denounced as a fascist.
Communism must be a mental disease for there to be so many apologists, even glorifiers, for it at this late date. We must mentally vaccinate people against this vicious ideology, just as we try to mentally vaccinate them against Naziism. Come to think of it, with the rise of antisemitism on the left, the two evil ideologies are merging.
Even that won't be wholly successful. There will be those for whom the picture of tens of millions of deaths and continental wide impoverishment, savage oppression and stultification of intellect, all the while the priviligentsia glide by the starving masses in their Ladas along the VIP lanes of the road, will actually exert a fascination and attraction. They will figure that they will be the Big Chief Commissars, and lord it over the wretched serfs the way Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Dear Leader did.
Yeah, we often forget how many jobs were lost when the totalitarian market for information and informers dried up. How's a weazel to make a living now? Well he can write for the Guardian, thankfully.
ReplyDeleteAnd those Soviet tanks rolling into Prague in 1968 really boosted the economy. (A Czech woman I know got out just before that, a matter of weeks before the door slammed shut).
Or Hungary in 1956.
ReplyDeleteThat golf factoid reminds me of how in old Soviet Russia, great games of chess used to be attributed to Stalin. Funny, that.
ReplyDelete