Bernie owns 3 homes and has other assets. Why hasn't the leader of socialism sold his homes, bought some land and invited other like-minded people to join him to build a socialist community? I've always believed in being and living the example of what one preaches.
When a buddy of mine, younger and Black, were chatting about defund the police, we concluded its all about heightened surveillance. You reach such high levels of crime, which you don't prosecute for so called 'social justice reasons' and voila, people beg to be surveilled. And I believe the administrative state is AI. We limit what AI is when we only think computers. The administrative state is technology created which has its own desire to proliferate. It is like a self realized Frankenstein.
And btw, you have grown so much. You graciously have published my essays over the past few years so I've tracked your interviews. With experiences you have had, including, I am sure, many slingshots, your insights have grown. You remind me of the growth of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya when he discusses the First Amendment. He is still a very kind man, but he is no longer naive.
We discuss how China and Russia are funding various movements in Africa. Now all of a sudden there is one Africa with one voice. He argues that they are now 'colonizing' the Black American experience. Marxism never dies. It just reinvents itself by its very nature because it is based on Hegel. A doctor friend pesters me why I bother learning about philosophy. I respond that one can't understand Marxism and all its iterations if you don't have familiarity with Western philosophy starting with Plato.
Quietly, the far left has been taking over our cities and ruining them. This is what happens when nobody takes any interest in politics and civic life dies out. That vacuum is filled by radicals and bad actors. Communists are taking over our city councils and setting up shot in the Mayor’s office. Not to mention the so-called Food Councils who have the ear of the Mayor and other influential people. This is why city-run grocery stores are being started in cities across America and the police have had their hands tied in some cities. Like in Austin, Texas for example where they defunded the police to devastating consequences.
Communism isn’t a thing of the past nor did it die with America’s defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It’s still alive and well in America in 2025 and is quite influential. The strategy of demoralization is still very much in their playbook with these groups picking up where the Soviets and Red Chinese left off. How has all this turned out? Not too good. City-run grocery stores and defunding the police were both a disaster. The former has already been tried and failed in the Soviet Union, why cities think it’ll work this time I have no idea. This is why we need to pray Zahran Mamdani doesn’t get elected Mayor of New York City because this is exactly the kind of stuff he’ll do.
Communists are using black Americans to gain power and then implement policies that hurt the very poor and black communities they claims to care so much about. Communists couldn’t care less about black people, they just want to exploit their plight for their own gain. All they care about is power. Nothing else. By the way, I would like to point out that anti-black racism was just as prevalent in Communist societies as it was in the West. It’s not like they were multicultural paradises. African students who came to the Soviet Union were treated like c***! In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet media, theaters and even children’s books portrayed black Africans as barbaric savages and juxtaposed them with monkey and apes. Soviet films portrayed black people as wild, animalistic and far removed from modernity. Soviet citizens resented the presence of African students in their country and especially didn’t like African men dating or having sex with Soviet women.
In 1963, Ghanaian student Edmund Assare-Addo was found dead on a country road on the outskirts of Moscow. African students were furious gathered at the Kremlin’s gates holding signs that read things like “Stop Killing Africans” and “Moscow, a second Alabama.” He was murdered because of his romantic relationship with Soviet woman. The New York Times interviewed the students and they reported regular harassment from Soviet citizens and physical assaults. Black feminist Audre Lourde noted in 1976 that African and Asian participants in a local conference were housed in a shabby, run down old hotel. Whereas she got first-class accommodations. This is because she was a famous black person and therefore a useful token for them. From the 1960s until the day the USSR collapsed in 1991, African students carried knives to protect themselves and their Soviet classmates would regularly call them racial slurs.
African students weren’t allowed to stay in the USSR for long periods of time after finishing their studies. Nor could their white girlfriends move with them. Soviet women who bore mixed-race children were left to raise them on their own and got no help from the state. They were pressured to either get an abortion or give their baby up for adoption. Soviet women who had relationships with African men were called prostitutes and shamed by their families and communities. Guest workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America who came to East Germany were treated very poorly. They were segregated from ordinary East Germans and their contact with them was very limited, not allowed to leave their dormitory and if they had sexual relations with a German they were deported instantly. If they became pregnant by a German they were either forced to have an abortion or deported. In Communist Cuba, the vast majority of people locked up in Castro’s gulags were blacks and mulattos. Castro himself was a racist as was Che Guevara who wrote many disparaging things about both blacks and Mexicans.
The Cuban Communist Party by the same token, has always been lilly-white and blacks were and still this day, couldn’t and can’t rise very high in it. Social discrimination against blacks remains prevalent in Cuba to this day. I could also point to all the ethnic minority groups the Soviets deported, the rampant antisemitism in Warsaw Pact countries or Communist China’s horrible treatment of the people of Tibet. So Communist societies were far from racial utopias where everyone held hands and sang kumbaya. Also in my experience while the United States and the West have come along away in our treatment of minorities and seeking to extend the blessings of liberty to all, communist and former Communist countries continue to be plagued by these same problems with racism, xenophobia and antisemitism.
Desperate people consider communism. In some cases is only in name since classes still exist and there's military spending which contradicts the purpose of the system. Of course there's point to discredit U.S. policy but the Kurds were being genocided by Saddam so going on about Iraq a mistake (like your pal John Papola does) denies the suffering of the ethnic minority people stuck in middle of warring nations. The posit is to choose a side, but what exactly happened to Matteo? John Papola "sent him off to school in Italy" and left behind a broken-hearted Latina lady ... oh of course I don't get (whatever) see: https://johnpapola.org/
Bernie owns 3 homes and has other assets. Why hasn't the leader of socialism sold his homes, bought some land and invited other like-minded people to join him to build a socialist community? I've always believed in being and living the example of what one preaches.
When a buddy of mine, younger and Black, were chatting about defund the police, we concluded its all about heightened surveillance. You reach such high levels of crime, which you don't prosecute for so called 'social justice reasons' and voila, people beg to be surveilled. And I believe the administrative state is AI. We limit what AI is when we only think computers. The administrative state is technology created which has its own desire to proliferate. It is like a self realized Frankenstein.
China is living proof of this ability to mass surveillance.
And btw, you have grown so much. You graciously have published my essays over the past few years so I've tracked your interviews. With experiences you have had, including, I am sure, many slingshots, your insights have grown. You remind me of the growth of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya when he discusses the First Amendment. He is still a very kind man, but he is no longer naive.
We discuss how China and Russia are funding various movements in Africa. Now all of a sudden there is one Africa with one voice. He argues that they are now 'colonizing' the Black American experience. Marxism never dies. It just reinvents itself by its very nature because it is based on Hegel. A doctor friend pesters me why I bother learning about philosophy. I respond that one can't understand Marxism and all its iterations if you don't have familiarity with Western philosophy starting with Plato.
Quietly, the far left has been taking over our cities and ruining them. This is what happens when nobody takes any interest in politics and civic life dies out. That vacuum is filled by radicals and bad actors. Communists are taking over our city councils and setting up shot in the Mayor’s office. Not to mention the so-called Food Councils who have the ear of the Mayor and other influential people. This is why city-run grocery stores are being started in cities across America and the police have had their hands tied in some cities. Like in Austin, Texas for example where they defunded the police to devastating consequences.
Communism isn’t a thing of the past nor did it die with America’s defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It’s still alive and well in America in 2025 and is quite influential. The strategy of demoralization is still very much in their playbook with these groups picking up where the Soviets and Red Chinese left off. How has all this turned out? Not too good. City-run grocery stores and defunding the police were both a disaster. The former has already been tried and failed in the Soviet Union, why cities think it’ll work this time I have no idea. This is why we need to pray Zahran Mamdani doesn’t get elected Mayor of New York City because this is exactly the kind of stuff he’ll do.
Communists are using black Americans to gain power and then implement policies that hurt the very poor and black communities they claims to care so much about. Communists couldn’t care less about black people, they just want to exploit their plight for their own gain. All they care about is power. Nothing else. By the way, I would like to point out that anti-black racism was just as prevalent in Communist societies as it was in the West. It’s not like they were multicultural paradises. African students who came to the Soviet Union were treated like c***! In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet media, theaters and even children’s books portrayed black Africans as barbaric savages and juxtaposed them with monkey and apes. Soviet films portrayed black people as wild, animalistic and far removed from modernity. Soviet citizens resented the presence of African students in their country and especially didn’t like African men dating or having sex with Soviet women.
In 1963, Ghanaian student Edmund Assare-Addo was found dead on a country road on the outskirts of Moscow. African students were furious gathered at the Kremlin’s gates holding signs that read things like “Stop Killing Africans” and “Moscow, a second Alabama.” He was murdered because of his romantic relationship with Soviet woman. The New York Times interviewed the students and they reported regular harassment from Soviet citizens and physical assaults. Black feminist Audre Lourde noted in 1976 that African and Asian participants in a local conference were housed in a shabby, run down old hotel. Whereas she got first-class accommodations. This is because she was a famous black person and therefore a useful token for them. From the 1960s until the day the USSR collapsed in 1991, African students carried knives to protect themselves and their Soviet classmates would regularly call them racial slurs.
African students weren’t allowed to stay in the USSR for long periods of time after finishing their studies. Nor could their white girlfriends move with them. Soviet women who bore mixed-race children were left to raise them on their own and got no help from the state. They were pressured to either get an abortion or give their baby up for adoption. Soviet women who had relationships with African men were called prostitutes and shamed by their families and communities. Guest workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America who came to East Germany were treated very poorly. They were segregated from ordinary East Germans and their contact with them was very limited, not allowed to leave their dormitory and if they had sexual relations with a German they were deported instantly. If they became pregnant by a German they were either forced to have an abortion or deported. In Communist Cuba, the vast majority of people locked up in Castro’s gulags were blacks and mulattos. Castro himself was a racist as was Che Guevara who wrote many disparaging things about both blacks and Mexicans.
The Cuban Communist Party by the same token, has always been lilly-white and blacks were and still this day, couldn’t and can’t rise very high in it. Social discrimination against blacks remains prevalent in Cuba to this day. I could also point to all the ethnic minority groups the Soviets deported, the rampant antisemitism in Warsaw Pact countries or Communist China’s horrible treatment of the people of Tibet. So Communist societies were far from racial utopias where everyone held hands and sang kumbaya. Also in my experience while the United States and the West have come along away in our treatment of minorities and seeking to extend the blessings of liberty to all, communist and former Communist countries continue to be plagued by these same problems with racism, xenophobia and antisemitism.
Desperate people consider communism. In some cases is only in name since classes still exist and there's military spending which contradicts the purpose of the system. Of course there's point to discredit U.S. policy but the Kurds were being genocided by Saddam so going on about Iraq a mistake (like your pal John Papola does) denies the suffering of the ethnic minority people stuck in middle of warring nations. The posit is to choose a side, but what exactly happened to Matteo? John Papola "sent him off to school in Italy" and left behind a broken-hearted Latina lady ... oh of course I don't get (whatever) see: https://johnpapola.org/