Tyrants – imagined and real
In today’s rapidly changing world, the idea of an article often becomes obsolete before you start writing it. Sometimes it’s very pleasing, if the problem disappears. But this article, to my deep regret, will not lose its relevance any time soon. Why? Because I want to devote it to a very serious problem: the dividing […]
In today’s rapidly changing world, the idea of an article often becomes obsolete before you start writing it. Sometimes it’s very pleasing, if the problem disappears. But this article, to my deep regret, will not lose its relevance any time soon.
Why? Because I want to devote it to a very serious problem: the dividing of families on the basis of political views. This is a pain that many feel.
When we read about the civil war in Russia and found out that the communist son would betray his father who did not approve of the Bolsheviks, somewhere inside me there was always a doubt: how could it be – to hand over one’s own father to the KGB? To betray a husband or a wife? This is just crazy. It’s impossible to believe, but I knew it happened. I didn’t feel all that pain and intensity — it was hypothetical. It didn’t happen to me personally.
Today, politics has divided people, circles of friends, companies, but most importantly – families.
I can’t say that I feel it fully, because our own children share our views in general, and we can always discuss any problems with them. I do not remember imposing our opinions on them, but we always encouraged questions and we answered those questions. Also, if we didn’t know the answers, we admitted it.
I don’t feel the situation as closely as many others, who call and share their misfortune with us — the loss of communication with their children.
“What do I do? I can’t say a word to my daughter, she starts screaming that I don’t understand anything. She doesn’t listen to a single argument; instead she goes crazy if I ask her even one question.”
“My granddaughter is very smart, she graduated with honors and she does excellent work. She took a leave of absence at her own expense and went to the States to help get Clinton elected… she walked door to door … She is very depressed now.”
“My son just broke off with us when he found out that we voted against Clinton. We never imposed our opinion on him. Sometimes I wanted to discuss and ask questions, but he immediately went nuts on us, so we fell silent.”
“We can’t discuss anything with the children, they have long written us off as old-regime idiots (although these ‘idiots’ paid for their education in universities and the down payments of their houses), and they simply do not want to talk to these idiots.”
“The worst thing that scares me is the impossibility of a normal discussion of concrete facts. I immediately get stigmatized: I am a racist if I just ask, for example, about why they make ‘black proms’ (graduation parties only for blacks). Or you are a fascist if you vote for Trump.”
“‘How could you vote for a Republican, they’re killing people!’ That’s what my 16-year-old grandson told me, sincerely believing it.”
Many people hear such things from acquaintances or find themselves in a similar situation.
I feel the pain and bitterness of people who have gone through so much in life. It is almost impossible for me to discuss anything with liberals, although, there are some encouraging signs. Very rarely do you see people ready to talk.
More recently, a chance meeting with a longtime acquaintance (let’s call him Misha), a man of liberal views, left me hopeful. Knowing that our views on Obama were divergent, I joked that I don’t even want to talk about the current president in his presence, to which Misha sadly remarked, “You know, I voted for Trump.” Probably my dangling jaw made him understand the degree of my amazement, because he added, “Well, it was impossible to vote for her.” Yes. It was impossible. But many of our people did vote for her, people who in theory should have known more and understood more about what liberalism really brings with it, in its modern American-European version. It brings the destruction of any freedoms – and in this lies all the horror, despite the beauty of the word “liberalism,” designed to justify the freedom of the individual.
I think everyone will agree that the task of parents is to protect their children. And if we can protect little children by explaining to them why they shouldn’t grab bubbles in boiling water with their fingers or poke a wire into an outlet, then the grown-up children are much more difficult to protect, because in response you could hear something that not even an enemy wants to hear. But they need to be protected all the same, they are our children at any age and we love them anyway. They will, of course, reap the fruits of what is planted in their heads by universities and schools, but reaping these fruits will be very painful.
No, I don’t encourage you to discuss political problems with them every day and quarrel about it. I’m very sorry for those who are in a position where they can’t ask a question and discuss things calmly. The paradox is that “the left,” who monopolized the right to humanism, tolerance, good feelings (remember, “Republicans are killing people”), are the same leftists who instantly start up, like a good sports car, and go on insulting and shouting, unwilling to talk, and displaying extremely contemptuous attitude towards those who think otherwise. Where are the good feelings towards others? I don’t know.
I would like to bring up in this article some of my considerations that may be useful to you as arguments, if you suddenly have the opportunity to speak; if you accidentally overhear; if you are seen or if someone feels your pain. Most of these things you already know or have heard before. I didn’t discover anything new. But maybe, somehow, it will help.
A small digression
In my understanding, the task of journalists is primarily to prevent the authorities from living in peace, to keep them in suspense, because power must be afraid of the people and not vice versa.
Any power makes mistakes. The only question is whether it understands the action as a mistake and whether it wants to correct that mistake or if it was deliberately done and there is no intention of correcting it.
Just as I criticized Obama all eight years for certain actions, and only for them, which I first naively mistook for mistakes, but then realized that this was a purposeful set of steps to destroy the country created by the founding fathers, I planned to do something like this — to criticize Trump after the election.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
Unfortunately, this can’t be done by the so-called liberals, who have nothing in common with real liberals, except for the name, and a stolen one, at that.
They do not and would not allow any legitimate criticism; their reaction to the legitimate election of D. Trump to the post of President is unprecedented. It is difficult to find a definition and it is impossible to find analogues of such harassment in history. It’s a hysteria; an animal, subconscious hatred of him, and this hatred passes on to closely-related people, family and friends. The person you knew as smart and educated threatens his wife with a divorce if she votes for Trump. A friend from a real, not virtual life, stops saying “hello.” According to researchers from Facebook, liberals cease to be friends in the virtual world far more often than conservatives. Why? Because tolerance can be shown, in their opinion, only to those who think like them. All the rest are enemies. And if the enemy does not give up, you know what you need to do.
“America is not only a country of immigrants, but also a country of the Law” and “illegal immigration is harmful to the United States” –these words spoken by President Clinton were welcomed by Congress in the 90s. When Trump says these same words, he is branded a racist.
“No sane country would ever reward illegal immigrants with citizenship or amnesty,” said Gary Read in 1993. And then he talked about how illegal people have access to all social programs, how it drains the system, and affects working Americans.
Here – listen for yourself: https://americanlookout.com/jpb-flashback-in-1993-harry-reid-said-no-sane-country-would-reward-illegal-immigrants-with-citizenship-video/
When this same thing was said by Trump, much more mildly, he was immediately enrolled in the category of racist Nazi dictators.
When he meets with a veteran – he is looking for popularity. If he won’t meet with a veteran – he is neglecting the interests of the people.
If he suggests the idea of partially paid post-partum leave for women – he is a populist. If he doesn’t put it forward — he doesn’t care about women.
Nobody touched Obama’s daughters or the lovely Chelsea Clinton, but how much nasty trash has already been said about Trump’s 10-year-old son in just a month?
Bill Clinton lied under oath – they talked about impeachment and the whole thing was brushed off. It was more important to bomb Belgrade than to condemn a President lying under oath.
Today, the Democrats are frantically searching for what else they can find or invent in order to announce Trump’s impeachment. He is, of course, far from being a saint, but he has already been doomed with everything that only a sick mind can come up with.
I think that the “community organizer” has become the most popular occupation among democrats: how to stir up young minds, starting in kindergarten, how to shut up those with whom you do not agree, how not to allow a person with non-liberal views into the university, how to take your children to a rally instead of classes, how to shed blood, organize street riots and attract press attention to yourselves, how to make oneself a “victim of police arbitrariness” – these are the most important skills for today’s liberals.
Here is the opinion of one lady: “We did not go to America in the eighteenth century, where people did not have rights and died of hunger and disease on the street. We went to America in the 20th and 21st centuries, to democratic America, where there is legal equality, political freedom and the rule of law, and that was until 2016, when a fascist, racist, social discriminator, anti-Semite, dictator and lying bastard came to power.
And he does not give a damn about hard-working people.
All those who set it up, and those who guide it, are directed to improving the lives of corporations and the top 1% of the rich. The Founding Fathers created the country that they destroyed in one day by voting for a vulgar uneducated anti-Semite and dictator, a protégé of the military department who falsified the elections.”
This lady, like many liberals, doesn’t bother with the facts of real life. She simply ignores them. Why bother with those facts, when there is this idea they got into their heads and no facts are going to make them deviate from this idea? The lady knows who put Trump into office (and who put Obama there?). But it remains unclear how “they” could destroy the country within one day. And who are these “they”? We, the American people, who went and voted.
That same 1% of the damned rich people, whom this lady doesn’t like so much, account for only 1%, and it wouldn’t have changed the picture. Especially since among this 1% there are many people who did not vote for Trump. They hate him exactly the same way that this lady, who doesn’t belong to the 1%, hates him. An interesting coincidence, is it not?
A little observation: in the Left camp, some people passionately call Trump an anti-Semite. Well, such trifles as a warm and very solemn meeting with Netanyahu, joint statements, public confirmations of the position: “Israel is our friend, we will always support it,” – these facts are unimportant and not noticed. Other leftists just as passionately refer to him as a Zionist who sold himself to Israel. Does anyone get confused by such a contradiction in the accusations against Trump in the leftist camp? It confuses the hell out of me. It proves that by accusing him of opposite things, they are not trying to find the truth, but simply accusing him of anything, regardless if it’s true.
Obama, who betrayed Israel and publicly humiliated the Prime Minister; Obama, who invited Louis Farrakhan, an anti-Semite who does not bother to hide his views, to march in 1995; Obama, who with Farrakhan (as Farrakhan’s assistant admitted) was always “an open liner,” this same Obama, who gave a green light to the creation of nuclear weapons and money to Iran, is not anti-Semitic, in their opinion.
Since the views of the aforementioned lady are shared by some people, and not so few as it was thought, since the left, led by Soros, created a movement with the proud slogan “Resist,” and consider Trump a dictator and a fascist, I would like to remind these “weeping Bolsheviks,” what real dictators used to do. And what would these so-called liberals would experience, if they lived in a real totalitarian society.
Totalitarianism as it is
First, let me illustrate just a few facts. Liberals today, if they do not personally participate in the riots, at least inspire them, giving the crowd the opportunity to riot, break window displays and cars, and pursue those who don’t agree with them. Honestly, it’s hard to say which is worse. Just try to go out in a cap or t-shirt with a Trump logo in San Francisco.
That great thinker, beacon of morality, and a major political figure Madonna said from the stage that the White House should be blown up. It would be more correct to classify these words as an incitement to terrorism, because that’s exactly what it is.
It would be interesting to visit her with these questions: whom does she inspire with her ideas? But if you pay her a visit, or, God forbid, put her in a comfortable cell with all the conveniences to think about life even for a few days, it would be regarded as political repression. She would become a great martyr in the liberals’ calendars; she might even be nominated to the presidency.
Many such con-artists would just love to become a “victim of police tyranny.” Well, not to actually be hurt, oh no! But to be put in jail for a short time, with a correspondent from CNN nearby to film it, to a photo, and then cleverly Photoshop it, adding a sea of blood to the picture, to show the country how much blood the bloody dictator shed.
They must prove that Trump is a cruel dictator. Prove it at any price, any provocation: calling for his assassination, insulting his family, boycotting his daughter Ivanka’s business.
I was sure that all people who came from the USSR know for sure what dictatorship is and what to expect from it. But I was mistaken. So I’d like to correct this mistake now and refresh people’s memories.
Here are some illustrations of what real dictators do: China, Tiananmen square, 1989.
Hundreds of civilians were shot during student’s riots and later eight leaders where shot as well. In this photo, you can see a person in the path of government tanks, about to be crushed flat and turned to dust.
USSR, Stalin’s terror
L.D.Miroshnikov, a former geologist (the 21st Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) recalls: “At a hasty pace, five hundred prisoners were brought at the end of the polar night. No special selection was made before they were sent to the secret camp of the NKVD [A1] ; among the convicts of this camp called ‘Fisherman’ there were even teenagers. They tell a story of a certain guy named Prokhor who got to the camp straight from the school bench after a fight with the secretary of the district committee’s son. Prokhor stayed for five years, when he was pulled out of the camp and sent to the ‘Fisherman’… Prokhor, after serving his five-year term, was not destined to return home. Staying alive after working on a secret facility [A2] was impossible. Some of the prisoners died of the radiation sickness, while others, after finishing work, were loaded onto barges and drowned… ”
Parents were arrested, and children were sent to orphanages often even when grandparents remained to care for them. Even the pregnant wives of “enemies of the people” were arrested, and they worked in the camps up to the last day of pregnancy. When the children were born, they were soon taken away. Sometimes, they lived in camps like this: “At seven o’clock in the morning the nannies were waking kids up: pinching them, kicking them from unheated beds (for “cleanliness,” children were not tucked in, but blankets were just thrown over the beds). Pushing fists into the children’s backs and showering them with brutal verbal abuse, they changed their tights and washed them with icy water. The kids didn’t dare to cry. They only grunted and quacked like old people. This terrible quacking could be heard from their cots all day. Children, who were grown enough to sit or crawl, laid on their backs, tucked their legs to their stomachs, and issued these strange sounds, similar to a muted pigeon groan. To survive in such conditions would be a miracle.”
On June 20, 1939, in Leningrad Vsevolod Meyerhold [A3] was arrested. At the same time, his apartment in Moscow was searched. In the search record, a complaint was filed by his wife, Zinaida Reich, who protested against the methods of one of the agents of the NKVD. Soon (on July 15) she was killed by unidentified persons.
Meyerhold was interrogated for three weeks: “…I was beaten like this: they put me, a sick sixty-six-year old man, face down on the floor, and beat me on a soles of my feet and on my back with a rubber band… the pain was such as if they spilled boiling water on me….” – from Meyerhold’s statement to Molotov (one of the ministers in the Soviet Government). Meyerhold signed all the papers and was sentenced to be shot. (But, in fact he was drowned in the toilet.)
One of the prison wardens later published a book with his drawings about how they tortured prisoners in the cellars of the NKVD and what happened to people who were forced to sign any accusations of themselves. Look, you can show them to some of your family members. Shock therapy is useful.
For instance, a man or woman would be put on a bucket filled with live rats. The bottom of the bucket was heated on an electric pad. The distraught rats, in panic, ripped the person’s buttocks apart.
This is how the officers of NKVD chose women to be their concubines.
Here is another torture: the arrested would get a bottle inserted into his anus or her vagina. Or other objects, as well.
Starving people were arrested for collecting loose spikelets in fields and condemned to 5 to 10 years and sent to camps. People were destroyed both physically and morally. The humiliation and trampling of human dignity at all levels was the norm. And when Western liberals visited these camps, the same as today, they, so in love with the Soviet regime, “did not notice” the machine of repression. Even then, they loved their great bright ideas of equality and world happiness. Even then these ideas overshadowed the human being for them – humiliated and offended, trampled and thrown into nameless graves by the System.
Interestingly, would such subtle people who were shocked to tears and depression by election results, who sincerely consider Trump a tyrant, want to look at the actions of real tyrants, rather than those whom liberals appoint as “dictators”? And if they don’t want to look at these real dictators, then what’s their reason? To not destroy in their sick imagination the image of Trump the cruel tyrant?
Millions of people were murdered by these dictators, without even knowing for what.
Can you imagine that at a concert in the USSR or in China, or in the North Korea, some singer publicly declared that he was ready to blow up the Kremlin or whatever such palace they have there in China or N. Korea? How many days would he, all his family, and friends, be left to live and in what manner would they die? It’s scary to imagine. But Madonna can do this, and still call Trump a dictator.
Trump doesn’t give access to the press room to certain media. Their choice is to lie and invent news. His right is not to let them into the White House. They will still lie, no matter what they hear.
When shouting about the freedom of speech, which he allegedly violated, we recall two things: did he forbid them to say what they wanted? No. They lied, and can continue doing it, sitting at their workplaces — not working at uranium mines.
But let’s see how REAL tyrants broke free speech and what they did with those who tried to resist tyranny with not even journalistic articles, but with poetry. Or simply by saying a word.
On December 13, 1938, the poetess Olga Berggolts was arrested on charges of “in connection with the enemies of the people, and as a participant in a counter-revolutionary plot.” After beating and torture, Olga gave birth to a dead child in prison. Her first husband, B. Kornilov, was shot February 21, 1938 in Leningrad.
On July 3, 1939 she was released and fully absolved of any crimes. She recalled: “They took a soul, dug sticky fingers into it, spit in it, spoiled it, then they thrust it back and said: ‘Now, live!”
It must be mentioned, that at the time of the arrest, Berggolts was quite a devout Soviet poet, yet even so, she was not ignored by the leader, Stalin.
I will not give any more examples from the bloody 30s to 50s. [A4]
In the early 80s, we went to visit our friend in a psychiatric ward. He was a full-fledged alcoholic who drank himself into a full stupor. He was treated and sounded quite sane. He showed us a boy of 16 or 17 years old, who was lying in his ward. We thought that the boy was mentally retarded: his mouth was open, he was drooling uncontrollably, and his eyes looked empty of any meaning. But the boy was not sick. He wrote a wall post in his college, in which he dared to ask several questions of concern, related to the Soviet system. The authorities sent him to a psychiatric hospital, where he was turned into a vegetable — for one paper edition, which was read, perhaps by a dozen people.
For some reason, I’m sure that all of our Hollywood beau monde who threatened to leave the US if the dictator Trump was elected (believing, probably, that the country will instantly collapse without their majesties), allow themselves to be rude to millions and to talk about Trump in this manner for one simple reason: they understand perfectly well that tyranny has nothing to do with him. If they knew, all these people who put “Resist” stickers on their cars, that the country really was ruled by a dictator, and they would be tortured or thrown into a psychiatric ward, then they would never open their mouths. Not their breed. This breed can only anonymously bark out of their corners and threaten, as well as cover their faces at rallies. This breed always hits from behind the corners and feels unpunished.
Can you imagine that the members of the Resistance against Nazis in Europe would hang their “Resist” sign on their bicycles? The first patrol and you’re in the paws of the Gestapo!
The same was under Stalin’s regime. Never mind a sign or paper – even a word said in the wrong company and you are in the basement of Lubyanka[A5] along with your children and wives and husbands. While there, you will write falsified reports on all your friends too, because only few could survive their tortures.
Yes, there were people who resisted, but they did not hang up logos on their clothes and cars and did not put pink hats on their heads – a symbol of the vagina, because they knew exactly what those real tyrants would do this very vagina (see the illustrations above).
Well-fed, spoiled, narcissistic Madonnas with the De Niros and such are brave, because they know for sure: they are not in any real danger.
There are millions of pieces of evidence of terror and tyranny in different countries. And if our liberals would not be so overwhelmed by hatred, but simply criticized (there is always something to criticize), they would see the difference between tyranny and Trump and not engage in incitement. To bring crowds outside, to kindle a civil war fire is always easier than to extinguish it.
Here is an example how they do it: Trump supporters wanted to hold a rally in Berkeley and were beaten up.
And then the crowd went on rampage through the streets, not even realizing that they were being used by real provocateurs as bait: if they were arrested – that’s the tyrant Trump’s fault. Not being arrested? Then intimidate people with a different opinion. Do you want to be beaten? No? So do not go to rallies in support of Trump.
The leaders of radical liberalism hope to create a crisis (that’s why Saul Alinsky wrote the “Guide for Radicals”). For this, our close friends are used, for whom liberalism has become a cult. Enemies are assigned who need to be removed, and this is not only Trump and his team. These are all of us who dare to think differently and ask questions. “Who is not with us, is against us” is their slogan, so well known to all Russians (this slogan was widely used by Communists all throughout the existence of Soviet Union).
Enemies are removed, and we all know how. Hooray? No, don’t cheer, because the next to be removed are those whose hands were used to make the coup: true associates, and the young ones, who today sincerely believe in the ideas of “democratic socialism” and liberalism, friends and children. Hitler, Stalin, and any tyrant destroyed his comrades-in-arms later. Even the tyrant does not want people to remember whose hands helped him to shed the seas of blood. They remove the witnesses and executioners of their deeds. They replace them with those who know less.
Trump is in a situation where it wouldn’t matter what good he would do for the country. He will be beaten, criticized, and provoked, because the interests of the country and the people are not important to liberals. He is tied by the hands and feet, and the results of his work are monitored and summed up literally from his first days. Some shout that he did not do anything that he promised, and others shout that he does everything he said, therefore he is insane.
They beat everyone who is on his team or somehow connected with him. Here is a terrible mishap they found: at a meeting in the White House, K. Conway (Trump’s election campaign leader) was sitting on the couch with her legs tucked. Oh, what horror! Obama, who violated all diplomatic etiquette, patted the English Queen on the shoulder, and sat with his legs on a table all the time — that was great!
Flynn – oh, how awful! – spoke with the Russian ambassador. So what?! Obama, in the second election campaign, spoke with Putin and promised him that after the election he would soften up. Clinton got money for her fund and then authorized the sale of uranium to Russia. But those are little things, are they not?
But everyone who is associated with Trump is the real monster. Attorney General Sessions is a racist. Well, his son-in-law is Asian, but he is still a racist, no?
For leftists, only their own ideas are important and the goal for them justifies any means. 
If the above examples will help you touch on the issue of dictatorship and show the real actions of these tyrants (even without mentioning Trump’s name, in a general conversation about tyranny), to make you think about who was a dictator and what those tyrants did, it will be a big step forward.
If it doesn’t, the main thing is to preserve relations in the family. It means they’ll have to learn the oldest lessons in history by themselves. And God forbid these lessons be as painful as they were for their parents and grandparents, who survived the repression of real tyrants. My grandfather, Samuel Shofman, did not come out alive from it.
Of course, we are not liberals who monopolized the right to universal kindness and humanism, but we, people of common sense, sincerely wish them well. And we really hope that one day (and preferably sooner than later — for their own sake), they will open their eyes to reality and understand that they can insult and humiliate Trump simply because he is not a tyrant.
He has flaws, but a tyrant he is not.
Thank you, A. Axelrod and T. Sundeyeva for translating the article .
Жанна Сундеева
