Duck And Cover - When Commies Were Really Commies, The Mamdani Vaudeville Act

Back in the Fifties, when the United States and the Soviet Unions had nuclear missiles pointed at each other, primed and ready to fire, elementary school children were taught to 'duck and cover'.  When the air raid sirens blew, they were to crawl under their desks, duck, and cover their heads with their arms. 

This of course would be of no use whatsoever.  A direct nuclear strike on Boston, for example, would incinerate everything from Back Bay to Charlestown and then some.  Nothing would be left but a pile of cinders.  Duck and Cover - practiced daily - was never meant to offer protection, but to generate a universal, nationwide anti-Communist solidarity.  The Communists were capable of the worst malignity, the most horrific destruction, and their intention was to take over the world. 

Duck and Cover coincided with the Army-McCarthy Congressional hearings during which Senator Joseph McCarthy named names, revealed supposed Communists in Hollywood and New York, and intimidated witnesses to inform on their colleagues. 

 

Anything to the left of Uncle Joe's fiercely right wing mania was assumed to be Communist inspired, and the whole country joined in the witch hunt.  Communists were everywhere, warned McCarthy, and they will look just like you, but catch them unawares and you will find them insidiously plotting to overthrow the nation and make way for a Soviet empire. 

Ironically the Cold War period was a pax Romana - the threat of 'mutually assured destruction' kept itchy fingers off the nuclear trigger, and although Americans feared for their lives, the likelihood of a nuclear showdown was remote.  Richard Nixon in fact subscribed to 'the madman theory' - one designed to make the Russians think that he was capable of a first strike, that he would be proud to go out in a blaze of glory. 

 

The nuclear threat was gradually defused, with both the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in the SALT (nuclear disarmament) talks after which both countries reduced their nuclear arsenal.  A nice gesture, but each country retained enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other ten times over. 

Ronald Reagan took another approach, and during his administrations built up America's nuclear and conventional military force, forcing the Soviets to match it, driving the economy to ruin, weakening the regime, and ending with a geopolitically dominant America.  The Reagan policy worked, and with his famous, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall', he forced the Soviets to concede.  The wall came down, and a new era of peace and collaboration ensued. 

Sort of.  Anti-Communism is part of the American ethos, and has been driven deep into the national psyche.  There is nothing worse than a Communist, for they are out to destroy, conquer, and rule.  It matters not that there is only one nasty Communist regime left - North Korea - and it is not in any nuclear parity with the United States which could turn it to rubble before Kim Il Sung knew what hit him.  China is a Communist country in name only.  It is really a capitalist powerhouse, a burgeoning unstoppable economy, a financial master, and a geopolitical force. 

Yet the bugaboo of Communism remains. A presumed Communist is running for mayor of New York City, Zorhan Mamdani, a Ugandan-Pakistani naturalized American who wants to give away the store. 

The poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the forgotten will be ignored no longer.  If I am elected mayor, I will reverse the trend, undo the unholy concentration of wealth at the top and transfer it to the bottom.  No New Yorker will be without food, affordable housing, health care, and economic benefits.  New York will no longer be an oligarchy of the rich and powerful.  It will be a people's city, an equal city, a kind, considerate, and generous one. 

This of course is not communism.  Under Soviet rule the private sector was abolished, freedoms curtailed, economic activity determined by the state, and supply and demand discarded in favor of dirigisme  nd complete state control - an extreme distortion of natural, normal, human activity valid since the Paleolithic and a means of governance doomed to failure. 

What it is is an adolescent, fanciful, irrational, unhinged political promise of aggressive socialism. It is no different than what Biden, Harris, and their Congressional claques promised for the last decade - programs to make services free, open to all, with no conditions.  Being poor, black, gay, or Latino was deserving of public largesse.  Wrongs had to be righted.  The eras of robber barons, economic elites, Wall Street predators, and capitalist con men had to end.  A new order of economic equality, justice, and parity would soon be in place. 

 

Social distinctions and prejudices would be no more, said Biden, and no longer would people of color be left as detritus on city streets.  The police would be defunded, kept in their barracks, and deployed only as social agents to work with local communities to become better.  The American educational system would be transformed from a hopelessly hidebound, discriminatory place to an inclusive one, acknowledging multiple intelligences, promoting the demise of elitist and patriarchal heterosexuality and raising the black man to the pinnacle of human society. 

So, Mamdani is simply more open and forthright about his intentions. Biden and Congressional progressives wanted the very same things as the New York mayoral candidate; they just couched it in different terms, sugarcoated the medicine, spoke in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusivity when what they really wanted was a revolutionary upside downing of the free market democratic system. 

Mamdani talks about free things, but so did Biden.  What was more socialist than forgiving student debt? or expanding already generous welfare packages, or affirmative action. Recruiting, hiring, admitting unqualified blacks simply because of their race was a giveaway.  These individuals did not have to compete in the marketplace, but were given something for free. 

Immigrants coming to the United States were let in with no questions asked.  They did not have to meet competitive standards and requirements and meet strict criteria for entry.  They were let in for free. 

Everywhere, in every sector of the American economy, in every corner of American society, progressives have promoted free stuff.  Mamdani just says it loud and clear.  The days of a free lunch are back. 

New Yorkers will quickly see what happens when the housing market is further distorted by what will be a fierce rent control,  They will see the results when wealthy New Yorkers - the engines of private development in the city and its primary taxpayers - abandon ship and move elsewhere,.  They will watch the education system fall farther into dysfunction and disrepair, and will see what happens when in a police-free environment crime rates soar, and the city becomes what it was in the Seventies - a trash-strewn, graffiti-defaced, lawless place fit for no one.  

Economic and social socialism has never improved the lives of anyone but the oligarchs in power.  Scandinavian socialism was touted as the world's only legitimate form of governance, all well and good in a uniformly white, Christian, traditional world; but when 'diversity' became part of the socialist package, the countries quickly began to fall apart. Giveaways, social buy-ins, were no longer valid. Public treasuries were being emptied and 'normal' Scandinavians wondered what hit them. 

New York under Mamdani will become an exaggerated caricature of the Biden years - the same ideas and policies, but  ferociously unleashed.  New Yorkers will see a city as ungoverned and chaotic as the Seventies, a place where no one wanted to live, a cacophonous, discordant, miserable place. 

Mamdani, Commie? Far from it. Unreconstructed socialist? Absolutely and by all means.  If you thought the Biden years were an example of unhinged socialist fantasy, you ain't seen nothing yet.