The Power of Imagery vs Memory

In the absence of war, the people forget its horrors. This is why the young are so frequently the first to cry for war. And since it's been a almost twenty years since the end of the Cold War, we as a nation aren't nearly as concerned with the global spread of Communism as we were when I was growing up. I guess this is why so many people in this country have forgotten a few very important things.
They've forgotten about the hundred million or so of their fellow human beings who believed in Marxist Socialism, and died as a direct result of its policies. They've forgotten about the brutal occupations, violent revolutions and wars of agression around the world that made Iraq look like a midsummer's training exercise.

It's the power of the Proletariat ideal - that utopean pipe dream of total equality, wherein all people recieve the same meager amount of food, the same low pay, and the same dismal apartment. They've forgotten what it really means, of course, but they see the imagery. They see the stark, high-contrast colors and the sharp, angled and idealized faces. They hear the rhetoric of those who forgot before they did: the We Will Provide crowd, promising to give them all they need, while evening out their incomes, whose speeches are gaining in popularity with young voters, even while those same voters complain about their already-too-high taxes.

Not everyone who uses this means of propagandizing his or her message is a Communist. In fact, I don't think people who use this kind of imagery today even know what it represents, for the most part. Obviously, the artists know where it came from, but the viewer generally couldn't care less.

Naturally, this is a case of art imitating life - because most Americans don't give a shit about much of anything, and obviously know even less.


But for those of us who grew up actively opposing the global spread of totalitarianism and the rise of a government strong enough to take things away from you for the common good, and for all of us old Cold Warriors, these images still hold a chilling message.

It's a message a lot of people in this country have clearly forgotten. Barack and his supporters, and Hillary and her supporters, aren't Communists, of course. But they've evidently forgotten about the threat posed by a government that's strong enough (big enough, in-your-business enough) to give you whatever it decides you need. Because that's also a government that's strong enough to take away everything you love, in an effort to impose an ideology of complete equality, wherein no one person has any more or less than any other.

Barack Obama is evidently opposed to one person being allowed to have more than another. In a television spot aired ad nauseum in Texas, he complains that, "We've got CEOs making more in ten minutes what the average worker makes in a year."

So what he's saying is, it's a bad thing that some else makes more than you. It's a bad thing that we're not all equal in income, equal in living conditions, and equal in lifestyle. Again, Barack's not really a Communist. But since it's been so long since we as a nation have had to really confront Communism, a lot of people in this country fail to recognize Socialist dogma when they see it. It's a siren song. It sounds good, but will lead you to your doom.

Just ask the hundred million people who've gone before you.