This Cartoon Seemed Far-Fetched In 1948

[BTDT]

http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.c...d-in-1948.html








Opinions ?

[swampfox]

"When anybody preaches disunity, tries to pit one of us against the other, through class warfare, race hatred, or religious intolerance, you know that person tries to rob us of our freedom and destroy our very lives."

I don't think I could have come up with a better description of the actions of the far right nut media and politicians than this myself.

[Captain Worley]

Can someone copy and paste it on here?

[swampfox]

It's an animated cartoon. It doesn't use the word "communism" but that's what it was about. There is a snake-oil salesman giving away bottles of a substance called "ISM" to labor, tycoons, farmers, etc, which will give each of them exactly what he wants if only they will sign a document giving up their freedom. A sensible guy nearby, who calls himself John Q. Public, makes a short speech including the quote I gave above. He invites the assembled crowd, all of them ready to sign, to taste "ISM" first to see what they're getting into. The results (in kind of a dream state) are typical and pretty accurate depictions of what the communist states did, and do, to their people. After they come out of it, the crowd chases the "ISM" dealer back towards what looks like a city in the distance.

This cartoon is embedded on a far right nut website. While the original intent of the cartoon in 1948 was probably a good thing ("probably", assuming it was not associated with some McCarthy-type movement, which was as close to totalitarianism and therefore Soviet-style government as we've come) the intent now was clearly to associate its message with our current real government. One of the first commenters beneath the cartoon, "Deb", wrote that she is "scared to death" after watching it. And there you have the real intent, to play up people's fears and comfort them in their prejudices today.

You can see how a lack of knowledge of history is important to purveyors of this kind of thing as presented on a current website. In 1948 we had plenty of reason to be concerned about communism. Today we don't.

If only Eisenhower and Truman ("who?", in the background) had agreed with Gen. Patton (again, "who?") that it was time to smash the Soviets as soon as we had taken Berlin, the world would have been a better place for all of us these last several decades.

Given the exact circumstances in which we live today, such presentation on a nut website was disingenuous and just on the line of being dishonest, which is, of course, their MO.

[Captain Worley]

Thanks for the play-by-play. Didn't realize it was streaming.

If only Eisenhower and Truman ("who?", in the background) had agreed with Gen. Patton (again, "who?") that it was time to smash the Soviets as soon as we had taken Berlin, the world would have been a better place for all of us these last several decades.

I think Churchill advocated for that. I'm not sure how that would have played out, although we would have ultimately won after a few more A-bombs were dropped.

[swampfox]

Churchill did advocate for that, but he didn't get much support.

As time goes by, I'm more convinced that we should have done it.

[Captain Worley]

I don't think anyone had the stomache for more war at that point.

It took close to 50 years of proxy wars, cold war, and economic factors, but we finally got them.

[General Jack Ripper]

I felt both pride and a touch of indefinite fear as I watched.

It is amazing to me that the real possiblity exists that America might fall... from within.

When I was a child, duck-n-cover drills against the inner-hallway wall made it clear that we could lose America. But that was from the dreaded Reds. That was an outside threat we (Americans) all stood against together. Back when the Feds knew that no foreign army could invade. Every man in the country would take out a rifle and shoot them. It was part of the National Defense Strategy.

But this... this dichotomy, this fork in the road to the American Dream... how do we forestall this change of direction.

An Entitlement Society does not work. And it won't work here. Each person must be free and unfettered in his own personal pursuit of happiness. That pursuit can not be free if the government is intent on the redistribution of wealth, the management of labor costs, and the takeover of private business.

[swampfox]

Welfare reform should be a priority. But we had it in the 90s, due to true bipartisan effort, and it was working well. When Bush was elected his Republican Congress declined to renew it. We need to restart it.

But that's totally irrelevant to this cartoon. It was about the fear of actual Soviet invasion in 1948, a fear that was somewhat justified. (Remember Nike missiles?)

Posting this cartoon on a far right nut website was an outlandish attempt to equate one issue in 1948 with a completely unrelated one today. This is a constant strategy by the far right nuts, and surely no rational person would see a connection.

I may have written this already, but a quote I heard recently from the famous Christian writer and novelist CS Lewis ("The Chronicles of Narnia") really hit it on the head. He said "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." Now that is a bit of insight worth keeping in mind.

I highly recommend his book "It Can't Happen Here". It reads like it was published yesterday.