For the past few weeks, I have felt like I have been waking up in the USSR. Or Venezuela. Or Cuba. Or Syria. Or any other communist country or Banana Republic. What is certain, is that I do not feel like I am in the United States of America.
I live in a city where it appears every single person drank
the Kool-Aid and is on board with the total destruction of our country, our constitution,
and all that it stands for. Who would have believed that a Jim Jones mentality
of following in blind faith could have affected so many?
How we got to this point is concerning. I do understand the
younger generations have not been taught the truths of what happens when
communists and socialists take over. Authoritarian governments and death.
But that leaves the entire Baby Boomer generation and old
folks that do know. A large portion of the voting demographic lived
during the Soviet era and remember the horrors of it all. Yet many of those must
still be living in some sort of peyote enhanced nirvana. Why else would they be
so unaware of what is taking place around them?
Before the internet era, news from behind the Iron Curtain came
from literature. My knowledge of the Soviet Union dates back to high school
years reading spy thrillers and Solzhenitsyn; terrifying scenarios all. I wondered how on earth this type of system
managed to take hold. Yet now I am witness to it transpiring right before my
very eyes.
In the late sixties, there was plenty of Revolutionary talk
running around the City of Berkeley. As a true Flower Child, I protested
against the Viet Nam war and the draft. I still feel our cause was for the
right reasons. However, I never once entertained the thought that Communism,
Socialism, or Marxism were good systems. I was not protesting with nut
cases like Jane Fonda in favor of a commie regime. I was protesting against
US intervention in a foreign war, and the forced conscription of young men sent
to die in jungles halfway around the world.
Apparently, it seems a good many of those I stood next to in
peaceful protests actually did believe in Socialism. Definitely, all those
who migrated out to Berkeley in the Summer of Love and beyond are still
carrying their Little Red Books.
Perhaps if some of the progressives had left the area
and lived elsewhere, they would have a different worldview. I have lived in countries where the government and
ruling class controlled the news; censored and arrested anyone with opposing
views and swiftly shutdown opposition. And suddenly, these tactics are being deployed
in America.
The Berkeley Times is a bi-monthly, sixteen-page,
free paper that bills itself as A paper for the people of Berkeley. It
is not something I usually read, and not anything I would ever bother to
comment on. However, the November 5 edition has my blood boiling.
The brief, front-page editorial is, as one would imagine,
anti-Trump. The editor had been “hoping
for a blue tsunami – a knock blow to a man who has made a mockery of the
American Democracy for the past four years.” * I read on in the hopes I would find examples
for this claim. Something to argue against. But there is nothing. That is how they
do it in Berkeley; Trump is bad, now shut up.
He went on to write, “Even with a Biden victory, my hopes
for this election have been dashed. Despite Biden’s decency, his message of
unity, and unflagging determination to bring people of our nation together, it
remains obvious that the rural voters in America remain strongly in Trump’s
camp.”
This, I can respond to. Biden is not decent. He has spent
nearly fifty years in the DC swamp, lining his pockets and that of his family.
He has not accomplished one single thing except to enrich himself, and sell our
country out to China.
Message of unity? In just the last few weeks before
the election he called Trump voters chumps and losers. That comes at the end of
four years of calling us racists and Nazis and xenophobes and homophobes and
any other vile name imaginable. Yet Trump supporters are supposed to forget the
name calling and physical violence that continues to this day?
Rural Voters? Code for them danged hicks who don’t
know nothing. Count me in, Mr. Editor.
The half page graphic for the editorial might be even more egregious.
A black and white drawing straight out of the Communist propaganda machine. A statue
of Trump being toppled in front of the White House. The artists comments:
“…I am horrified by the repression and violence of the
police state, while energized and inspired by BLM and immigration rights movement
taking to the streets to demand justice.” **
No, we do not live in a police state. All of the
violence has been caused by Antifa, BLM Marxists, and far left radicals.
But there is no point in even attempting to counter these
accusations. There is no possibility for rational discourse in this city.
Just last week I stopped to talk to a local cop who was
supervising the cleanup of a car wreck. I thanked him for his service and said
that if I could, I would hang a Blue Lives Matter flag in front of my house. He
smiled and said, “but then your house would be vandalized.”
What is clear is that I am hated in my own city for no
rational reason. This is no way to live in the Land of the Free and the Home of
the Brave.
***
On a side note, I want to point out that although I have
been a political/news junkie since those early days witnessing the Free Speech Movement,
I did not start publishing these types of thoughts until recently. It is my modest
way of fighting the good cause. I much prefer to write fiction. Fun, light
stuff that takes the reader to a world outside of the current chaos. For anyone
interested in a bit of true 1969 Berkeley riots, please take a look at my
latest novel A Neapolitan Intrigue (the 1969 parts are brief flashbacks. The rest is set-in present-day
Naples, Italy.) Also, it's a fun read.
If I sell enough books, I can escape this prison!
* R.Todd
Kerr
** Juana
Alicia
