The Commies are (still) coming!

By Capt. Fogg

If you really thought the Obama-as-Communist insanity had anything to to with Obama, with National Health Care or progressive income taxes or anything else in the real world, here's some evidence that might change your mind. We've seen many attempts to make us afraid of creeping Communism during the last two years and I've written about some of them: stern lectures about how frogs won't notice if you boil them slowly, fake letters from professors quoting "exchange students" who warn us about small increments of socialism being what brought on communism in Vietnam. Of course, Communism never did arise that way anywhere, but by armed revolution or invasion, nor did it grow from or replace socialism but rather corrupt feudalism or colonial fiefdom. The slippery slope argument they all share is a fallacy of course; an unsupported assumption or extrapolation designed to deceive and frighten, but it's one of the few things left to Obama haters and they continue to use it.

The recent recrudescence of a fake quote by Nikita Khrushchev that first appeared to the delight of wingnuts nearly 50 years ago is a perfect example. Titled "And so it begins!" the screed tells us that:

We cannot expect Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.

That Khrushchev never said it or anything like it and that extensive research supports the fact that it was cooked up by people who had private reasons to object to social security, minimum wages, welfare and unions, doesn't really matter. This is the USA, and most of us are either ignorant, dishonest, or both, and a substantial number are barking mad and willing to believe anything that validates their obsessions, their fears and their greed.

I'm nearly convinced that the biggest problem facing our new administration is not terrorism, depression or climate change, but the enemy within; the enemy who disseminate viral e-mails, throw tantrums on AM radio, giggle and sneer on Fox News: the people who make stupid jokes and the people who pass them on and on and on.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)