Return with me now to the days of yore, when frothing left wing loonies exhibited some semblance of knowledge and didn’t just spew bizarro diatribes, as exhibited in the recent Garofolo rant. I hearken back to an era of bi-polarity (no, not the mood swing/disorder, lithium kind) but to the 1980’s, when the Good Guys (USA and western society) and the Black Hats (the Soviet Empire and their captured lackey governments) squared off to contest ways of life and global spheres of influence.
It was a simpler time. Our external enemies were easily identifiable: they were blatant in railing against capitalism, freedom of speech, belief in God, individual accountability, and love of country, while pleading, teary eyed, for pro-government wet-nurse-ism (Soviet-style socialism). Their domestically deranged fellow travelers, the unhinged adversaries of the Founder’s Constitutional principles, were relegated (correctly) by voters to minority political power status, and were as effective as a brace of quacking ducks.
However, time has ticked on. What was once widely considered destructive and radical has become mainstream. Up is down, right is left, and now the efficiency experts who brought us oversight of the Post Office, Fannie Mae, and the Internal Revenue Service are trolling in the private sector and seizing auto manufacturers, banks, and insurance companies. When a government power grab of this sort occurs (taking control of private industry), one should recognize that A. these are the same tactics that Third World, tin pot dictators employ and B. history demonstrates that it leads to economic ruin. Not surprisingly, such moves are cheered by Hollywood as the answer to all economic and cultural ills.
Most are sleepwalking right past this profound paradigm shift in American governance and society: the individual is being pushed aside and replaced with Soviet style socialism and collectivism. It is operating, however, under a new facade in the name of “social justice.” More and more citizens are being encouraged to ride in the wagon, rather than shoulder the hard but rewarding task of pulling it. Those amongst us who choose not to sacrifice, struggle, and compete to improve their standings in this life would much rather rely on the government in its feeble attempts to erase all human differentials in character, drive, and capabilities.
While, of course, a fool’s errand, Big Brother will still endeavor to force this makeover, all the while rendering our society less vibrant in the hyper-competitive world economy; as a result, wealth and jobs will flee at a greatly accelerated pace. Few will be bothered to consider history, littered with failed governments (see former Soviet Union) that foundered because they espoused the canard that, in their economies, all would share equally in the glorious fruits of the people’s labor, regardless of individual efforts. Results be damned, what mattered was that they meant well. Right.
Accordingly, in this age, massive migraines will be visited upon those who search on big or small screens for heroic Hollywood protagonists motivated by the philosophy of individual initiative and character. How did this come about? The vast majority of producers, mass media barons, and college professors have been successfully co-opted –whether they know it or not — to the unthinking, statist view of life.
One might reasonably ask the basis of such an indictment. It is quite simple, really. I have read Marxist/Leninist philosophy, listened to interviews of former KGB agents, and been involved in my very own international spy incident while working on Capitol Hill. What has been widely documented but virtually ignored by those whom only obsess about the most critical and up-to-date tweets is the fact that the KGB sought to cultivate and groom, throughout the US and Western societies, what they categorized as Useful Idiots. The record shows that they specifically referred to and focused upon those involved in entertainment, news, and academia.
For example, there is a former Soviet KGB operative deeply involved in propaganda operations, Yuri Bezmonev, who escaped to the West in the 80’s. In an interview, he stated that their long-range (20-year) goals were to re-educate generations of students by softening up academia to Marxist/socialist ideology. KGB efforts were spent largely on ideological conversion to alter prevailing U.S. views over time and normalize the socialist economic philosophy within American society. They pursued college professors, who they considered self important, malleable, and subject to any attention lavished on them. Moviemakers were another essential target, mostly because they were characterized as lacking moral standards and had an important part in shaping broad, societal attitudes.
They may have had some level of success. As one reviews recent headlines, we find Hollywood (once again) engaging in torrid love affairs with tyrannical (but trendy) socialist leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Most of these Hollywood collectivist worshippers seem to be amnesiacs, however, when it comes to the fate of a former like-minded paramour–the Soviet Union. While the Sov’s are so yesterday, it is instructive to recall that their economic system collapsed under its own stupor, inefficiencies, and the people-work-for-the-state philosophy.
So, here’s a shout out and some perspective for the drug addled and mind-gutted: skipping blithely down the socialist/Marxist path leads directly to the dead end of Moscow’s abject poverty experience, not the worker’s paradise envisioned in the land of alternate reality. And speaking of dead, under the banner of socialism, 100 million citizens in China, the U.S.S.R., Europe, Asia, and Latin America who disagreed with the dear leader’s dogma, were slaughtered or starved by the government and piled up like cordwood.
No doubt, these points will be met with blank stares and slack jaws. The record shows that hyperventilating Hollywood will blindly gravitate like moths to statist porch lights, dictators, and despots, no matter what the tyrants’ records are.
It is time that a serious pushback occurs in Hollywood; many more scripts promoting love of country, self-sacrifice, and individual initiative and accomplishment should be green lit. Not only will these films appeal to a significant segment of the population turned off by the standard fare churned out by the studios, but they will likely generate gobs of revenue while acting as a speed bump to our rapidly eroding culture.
Marc Zimmerman is a former Capitol Hill legislative assistant who focused on defense, international trade, and business. His screenplay, Russian to Judgment, about his undercover work for the FBI in pursuit and expulsion of a KGB agent from the U.S., is available for development. He can be reached via mzimmerman@yahoo.com
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