If You Like the Corona Crisis, You’ll Love Communism

We are now beginning to experience what people in socialist countries always experience:

Massive shortages of basic food items and everyday necessities like toilet paper. Lengthy lines of irritable shoppers outside of shops – at least the ones that are still open. Heavy rationing and constant government meddling with how we live. I can be talking about one of two things here: life under the corona crisis, or business as usual in socialist countries.

We are now all coming to terms with government lockdowns, rationing, shortages, and panic buying. That is pretty much a new experience for most of us in the West. But for those doomed to live in socialist paradises, this is just what life is like on a daily basis – and it has been for decades now.

The horrors of living under these leftist dictatorships such as Venezuela are now becoming our lot as well. Certainly most younger people in the West have never known anything like this before. But many of our parents have known all about it.

Our parents or grandparents who grew up during the Great Depression knew what such life was like – and thankfully most of them learned from it. Most learned to value life and what we have, and most learned about the need to not waste. After the harrowing 1930s they knew that everything could be of value, so they tended to hang onto things.

My parents were a case in point. From my earliest years I recall them trying to instil in us kids the need to be frugal and never to waste. I even remember my dad telling me not to use so much toilet paper when going to the bathroom. And when my parents did eventually pass away, it was interesting to go through the family home.

There we found so many cardboard boxes in the basement, in closets, and elsewhere, many of them with the words “Waste not” written on them. I found boxes full of other boxes, or boxes full of paper bags. They really did not throw away anything.

And for good reason. They did not go through a week or two of lockdowns and shortages like we are now going through (and I do not know how much longer we will be). They went through years of deprivation, hardship, shortages and difficulties. So most of them learned their lessons, and never sought to waste anything again.

Many of us are now for the very first time going through for a period what our parents went through, and what folks living in communist and socialist countries go through for most of their lives. Whether in the Soviet Union or former communist Eastern Europe or Cuba or Venezuela, this sort of life was/is the norm.

So if that is what you are keen on, then keep foolishly championing politicians in the West like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Jeremy Corbyn. Keep denouncing capitalism while you enjoy all of its many benefits. Keep railing against the free market as you use its products to do so: smart phones, laptops, the internet, etc.

Keep shouting vague and meaningless slogans about “equality” and the like. Of course if all these Western lefties were at all for real, they would have long ago moved to these workers’ paradises like Venezuela or Cuba. But for some reason they never do.

Let me turn to a brand-new piece on all this which is well-worth quoting from. Daniel Greenfield has just written an article with the title, “Coronavirus Communism Comes to California.” He notes how Californians had recently run with socialist Bernie Sanders in the Democrat primary.

And he reminds us of how Sanders not all that long ago was shouting his praise for Venezuela. The rest of his piece goes as follows:

The socialist dream in Venezuela began with toilet paper shortages, then dairy shortages, and eventually no food, medicine, or drinking water, while the Marxist regime paid its military thugs in food supplies. A few supermarket lines are only a small taste of “democratic socialism” in action.

The coronavirus isn’t Communism, but it has created social, political, and economic conditions similar to that of Communism, with an authoritarian state, a frightened populace, and resource shortages. There’s no better laboratory for seeing how the real thing would play out than in California.

California’s Sandernistas are invariably on the wealthy and comfortable side. Bernie bumper stickers rarely show up on beat-up Chevys, but on a Tesla, on a Mercedes, or on a Beemer. You can spot Bernie lawn signs outside lavish mansions whose owners imagine that socialism is for someone else.

Someone else’s cars and mansions will be confiscated. Not theirs. Someone else won’t be able to buy basic staples. Not the Silicon Valley tech bros pouring a fortune into the Sanders campaign and its PACs.

Bernie’s wealthy donors in the Inner Mission and Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, and Echo Park in Los Angeles, are now discovering the lifestyle that they’ve only romanticized from a distance before as they wait in line in empty supermarkets and stare baffled at ‘Out of Stock’ messages on Amazon listings.

To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, the poet laureate of California socialists, “When Communism comes to California, it will be wrapped in a repurposed paint fume respirator mask, wearing medical gloves, and driving a BMW with a Bernie 2020 bumper sticker while frantically grabbing rolls of toilet paper.”

There are two kinds of socialism: the ideal and the real. Ideal socialism is an entertaining set of intellectual games, castles in the sand, ivory towers in the air, where the right words and attitudes can enable the enlightened to implement heaven on earth. Real socialism is standing in line for toilet paper.

Capitalism is the best argument for socialism. When the supermarkets are full and there are lots of good jobs, then it’s easy to imagine that the system can be improved with a lot of authoritarian planning. Why not take all those goodies and distribute them more efficiently? There’s so much of the stuff that it seems easy to redistribute it, to add a few zeroes to budgets already filled with imaginary numbers.

And socialism is the best argument against itself. Socialists always think that they will lose their freedom to a wise ideal, only to discover that they will lose it to a grubby reality of incompetent bureaucrats, frightened mobs, and armed men in the streets.

Bernie’s vague rambling plans to nationalize everything from electricity to the internet, to bring into being a nation where the government decides how much deodorant and shoes you get to have, sound great until it stops being a hip ideal and becomes the tawdry reality of waiting in line for toilet paper. You don’t need a literacy program to realize socialism is a bad idea when you’re living through it.

California politicians have taken a break from a torrent of insane bills that proposed to ban receipts (they’re bad for the environment), ban fur, legalize eating roadkill, (if you run over a rabbit, you can eat it, but don’t you dare wear its fur), and banning separate clothes sections for little girls and boys, to ineptly tumble the state and its major cities headlong into a mismanaged response to the coronavirus.

The incompetence of California Democrats was all fun and games when it led to blowing up the homeless population while wasting billions of dollars, banning police from turning over illegal alien pedophiles to ICE, or accidentally outlawing freelance work across the entire state for the unions.

But now there are real consequences. It’s not just another bunch of zeroes or a handful of victims whose stories will never appear on any cable network except the one no respectable socialist would watch. Millions of lives have been disrupted. And countless lives are potentially on the line.

Socialism sounds like a great idea if you imagine that the people running things are smart, moral, and competent, as socialists imagine that they are. It falls apart in the real world where people aren’t. After voting for Bernie Sanders, Californians are discovering what it’s actually like to live in Venezuela, Cuba, or the Soviet Union, where they have no rights, there’s nothing in the stores, and nothing works. https://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2020/03/coronavirus-communism-comes-to.html

Of course to say all this is not to argue against some temporary and stringent government intervention in times of a major national crisis. But what it is to argue is this: all of those who hate the free market while singing the praises of socialism are now experiencing first-hand just what socialist life is like. I for one think it stinks.

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13 Replies to “If You Like the Corona Crisis, You’ll Love Communism”

  1. Dear Bill,

    Thank you again for the interesting article.

    We don’t need to be reminded just how left wing the ABC is. However, the programme’s presenter for Media watch was today busily gloating over the fact that last week Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt were not taking the corona virus pandemic seriously enough but now Alan Jones was broadcasting from a ”big safe mansion”. President Trump also got a serve for calling it the ”China” virus!

    Then he launched into the theory going around that a laboratory in Wuhan had accidentally caused a leak in its bioweapon programme which had started the epidemic for which he said defensively ”there is no proof at all”. Yet the very fact that China has come out and ACCUSED the US of starting the virus through their bio weapon programme makes one suspect that they really DO know how the virus started and are cleverly putting the seeds of doubt in people’s minds that it is the US who is the ”bad guy” not them.

    Whilst Western governments in the world with its ethos of unrestrained capitalism, liberalism and individualism is far from perfect I think I would rather live under it than live under communism. I am old enough to remember the brutal Stalinist years. People from the Baltics were amongst my acquaintances so I learned what they suffered. China’s breaches of human rights over the decades are well documented. The merciless one child policy is only one example which springs to mind for anyone who cares about the sanctity of human life.I know the West has not been perfect in that regard either but they have to my knowledge never actually dragged a woman out of her house and performed a late abortion on her.

    Therefore, any regime which has gone to those extremes would not think twice about lying about something as important as the origin of the corona virus in my opinion.

  2. In NZ the left are already suggesting to turn the economic package of grants into a Universal Benefit once the dust has settled! I kid you not.
    The same will happen here in Australia also, as how do you now take the dole back to it’s original amount after doubling it, when probably another million people are now going to be also getting it – and for a lot of them their first time?!!

    Communism has a bad name but we shouldn’t stigmatise the Chinese Bill —- Childish Communist Party sounds much better. And there are only 92 million party members out of a population of 1.5 billion. Turn them on themselves I say or they will just keep on supporting leftists here in the west and turning us all socialist and then inevitably communist. They are worse than the EU! Read labels and buy nothing from China if you like your way of life.

    Thanks again Bill and God bless.

  3. Where Australia’s government is being generous to the point of devastating the budget, it seems America’s Democrats see Coronavirus as a wonderful opportunity to impose social engineering on the country. Obviously for some no crisis, indeed no human suffering, is too grave not to be used to advance the cause.

    One can only shake their head at the darkness of human nature.

  4. All man-made Utopian pipe-dreams inevitably founder on the human factor: The shocking divine diagnosis of human nature reiterated to Noah and his family after the Deluge still says to us: “human, so thoroughly human”:

    “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. … – Genesis 8:21b [NIV]

    Two World Wars and countless other humanly-perpetrated atrocities lie between our time and the vacuous optimism of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer and their Enlightenment-era philosophical predecessors. “In God we trust.”!

    This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. – Jeremiah 17:5 [NIV].

  5. Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and his minority government want sweeping powers during this virus crisis. The opposition won’t let him get away with that.

    Our Prime Minister had once told the public, before he was elected, that he admired the way the Chinese Communist government was able to get things done without any hoops to jump. He is now digging his heels in, hoping for a spending spree “coup” of sorts, (Emergency Measures) and higher taxation on its citizens over time. The opposition party won’t allow the removal of Parliamentary oversight. To not have this oversight in place would be dangerous for Canada under our present Prime Minister.

    It is small mercies that have allowed us to have a minority government during this time, under the circumstances. They are still battling it out in Parliament. Our PM better humble himself over this matter. God is in charge, and we can only pray for common sense in governance. Please pray for Canada and her ongoing democracy.

  6. For me the bigger question is, “When is this government totalitarianism going to stop? Or is this now a permanent part of our lives?”

  7. Only last week, a young family member told me that I was old fashion. I replied “and right”.
    Yes, my grand parents and parents recycled paper, compost, clothes. My medical Dr Father would be in his element knowing that chloroquine may help with recovery. The good old medicine from 60-70 years ago that did its job.
    Why not call it Communism Covid19, that is where it originated?

  8. One could also say, “If You Like Communism You’ll Love the Corona Crisis.”

  9. This Kungflu Covid 19 is insane. Destroying our Nation and Economy and locking everyone and everything down is vandalism on a vast scale. Backed up by Police and the Army and a raft of newly minted fines!(AND MADNESS!) and we are doing national euthanasia and suicide on the basis of irrational fear of a SARS type flu. What idiocy. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ALL LEFTISTS NOW?

    Sorry I’ll stop hitting the Capital button. The inner totalitarianism of politicians and journalists medical “experts” and elitists is astoundingly on display, all based on over reaction and false science yet again.

    This is not a pandemic it is panic, take away the dem from the middle. A malaria quinine drug which has been used successfully for 40 years (it doesn’t need new trials) and it is quite safe and kills the corona virus, the Crown of pathenogenic bugs originating from laboratories and wet (animal slaughter of bats and rats and pangolians) and disgusting unhygenic markets and practices in Wuhan China. I bet XI Ping has not been able to wipe the smile off his face? He has destroyed Western Nations Globally which had a Judeo Christian foundation. Well done and congratulations on building upon the climate change crisis (NOT) of How Dare You! Greta of Thunder Mountain.

    People cowering in their homes (Orwellian, “Social distancing Saves Lives”) while beaches and parks are closed, regional airlines going to the wall, shutting down aviation and travel, holidays and cruise ships, all sporting events, all entertainment, food venues and cafes, churches and weddings, (spineless Christians who will not stand up to this totalitarianism) well fill in the gap if I have missed anything? The World has gone mad and I have spent the last 3 days crying for our beloved Country and my 5 grand children in Melbourne who were to spend Easter in the now ghost town of Cairns.

    People wearing masks and gloves. I even saw an aboriginal couple in Edmonton walking together with the wife wearing surgical gloves! No greetings no kisses and hugs. It’s AS IF ALL PEOPLE WALKING AND TALKING HUMAN BEINGS (sorry capitals again) made in the image of our wonderful Creator and Redeemer are now considered Darwinian petri dishes of germs and contagion. Fear stalks the Land!

    Please read/reread Michael Creitghton’s debunking of the Global Warming Climate Change. The title is ,” State of Fear.” Please excuse spelling mistakes as I am extremely depressed and in an utter state of grief for our Nation.

    I have been hoping and praying President Trump will end this madness by Easter, but I wonder if the people/medicos (one who was so wrong about AIDS in the 80’s) around him will pressure him to not follow his common sense and gut reaction. Pray that sanity will prevail?

  10. Patricia I would say of China me thinks the country doest protest too much!

    I think you can make socialism work on paper but lots of things work on paper that don’t work in real life. You have to be diabolical or an idiot to believe that despite always failing it isn’t the ideology that was wrong but the leaders.

  11. This incredible state of fear and anxiety that stalks our wonderful Country of Australia is depressing to behold. All these draconian measures adopted of setting up a police state and restrictions that are imposed by a select ruling group of politicians and their enablers with Premiers of States and Territories and medical advisers and other scientific elites is basically a Coup that the weak and propagandized populace or “sheeple” has gladly allowed. It is utter madness to destroy our economy by applying a sledge hammer to a tiny tack. I feel like the only sane person living in Australia.

    Yet again collectively we have fallen for the latest hoax and scam . It seems we are ALL LEFTISTS NOW. ( I won’t be apologizing for CAPITALS )
    There was no due diligence done , no cost benefit analysis balanced to first easily predict the dire consequences of this inappropriate shut down and lock up and crazy social distancing when imposing this idiocy. Just normal reactions with caution and responsibility were sensible appropriate preparation with targeted isolation and use of antibiotics antisceptics normal hygenic processes that are normally prescribed and practiced in relation to this SARS type flu Corona virus 19 . Very few people even world wide WILL ACTUALLY DIE ENTIRELY AND ONLY DUE TO COVID 19. ( even those who may die ” with ” it along with other serious health issues )

    The people of the Western Civilizations and previously Judeo Christian Nations have been decieved yet again. This is not a pandemic but a panic . Take away the middle 3 letters dem and apply it to all the democracies that have given up their freedom faith and family. It was foreshadowed and anticipated by the extinction rebellion catastrophic man made climate change looney nonsense and demonisation of CO2 ( the life of plants and trees ) This false premise has not been demonstrated or challenged for at least 40 years. Shouted out utter nonsense and spearheaded by crooked plaited Greta of thunder mountain who can ” see ” CO2 .

    It is now too late to say we made a mistake and take all this craziness back . ScoMo is rolling out welfare for at least 6 months and closed Parliament till August. Half the country will be on the welfare roll ( I will not use the PR terminology of job seekers becoming job keepers ) and unemployment and under employment will suddenly run at at least 40%. PM Morrison is still just another ad man . By the way his ad , ” Where the bloody Hell are you ? ” was blasphemy. The blood being that of Christs sacrificial blood shed on the Cross for the sins of the world.

    The other lies and deceptions that people have willingly accepted are ranging over decades and centuries. They are Evolution ….., unscientific goo to you via the zoo…… BigBang nothing exploded!….the millions and billions of years that have never existed…. countless evolutionary fairytales told to adults…. human beings were not made in the image of God but came from ape like chimp origin…. global warming and climate anthropmorphic dangerous change of the gas of the life of plants and trees now believed to be pollution emissions of CO 2. Human are plague on the planet…..Eugenics for the worthless and feeble minded…..Genocide of the Jews …..Social Darwinism ruthlessly put into practice by Hitler Stalin Pol Pot Mao ( please add your own favourites ) Racism because we refuse the Bibles truth that we are all one blood and one race…..Abortion and euthanasia…..Australia murders 100, 000 babies each year. An MCG amount of unborn beautiful babies …raw evil ? Since Eve was tempted first by the serpent disguised as Satan in the Garden ( Our Sin brought death disease and suffering as a consequent Curse on us and all of Creation ) with Adam standing near by just proves we are desperately evil rebellious sinners under Gods wrath unless ….

    We acknowledge that our original parents of all of us 7 billion are desperately in need of a Kinsman Redeemer Saviour Messiah Jesus Christ Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of all Sustainer, Prince of Peace. We all go back to a geneology from one of the 3 sons of Noah , Shem, Ham and Japheth. The 8 survivors of the Global Flood catastrophic year 2348 BC or 4500 years ago .The Flood judgement happened 1656 years after Creation. This is a true timeframe of history as it is according to the authority of the Word of God . Remember and read Genesis 6000 years ago Creation. Johns gospel , ” In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God …” The Word or Logos is Jesus our Creator and Redeemer.

    God help us and our once great Nation, so ironic there won’t be ANZAC Day 2020 but this utter madness on April Fools Day 2020 ?

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