Future Gulags - Part III

I could go on and on writing about Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and its remarkable blend of the historical and the prophetic, but you need only open the book yourself, give it a read, and measure his portrayal of the reality of Soviet socialism against the guile and hatred expressed by today's leftists who, like their Soviet mentors, crave power above all else. You don't need me to point this out.

But because I'm on kind of a roll, in this last post on the subject I'll just leave you with a few more of Solzhenitsyn's observations that particularly struck me as I reread the book over 40 years after my first reading. 

The Usefulness of the Mob. Let me begin by starting a truth about the lack of truth: the left must always lie. In fact, the lie is perhaps their primary rhetorical tool. Because their ideas are bankrupt and have led consistently to failure, the left cannot justify or even support them through rational argument or in a debate. And so, they lie. They lie repeatedly and loudly, and they do so in concert; i.e., they all join in to ensure we all hear it. Bombarded with the lie from every direction, the uninformed and unthinking begin to believe it.

Stalin realized the mob could be useful in spreading the lie, because the mob, all screaming the same thing, provided a public legitimacy to useful lies. To this end his minions created mobs to storm the streets and shout the lie.

Solzhenitsyn offers an example related to the famines that struck the Russian people and led to so many deaths. Of course, the famines resulted directly from Stalin's policies, but that truth could not be admitted. He, therefore, found convenient scapegoats, and before the predetermined court verdict mobs were formed:

The workers and employees wrathfully voted for the death penalty for the scoundrels on trial. And by the time of the Promparty trail, there were universal meetings and demonstrations (including even schoolchildren). It was the newspaper march of millions, and the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom: "Death! Death! Death!" [GA, p. 48]

Yes, the people demand it! And the "newspaper march" indicates how useful it can be for those in power when they also control every media outlet.

Today many of our cities continue to be plagued by the rule of the mob, mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter supporters, a mob that strikes fear into the hearts of weak, leftist officials. And so, these mayors and governors dishonestly label the mob's destruction and murder as "peaceful protest" and then cave to their demands. The media, of course, ignores it all because the chaos comes from the left. It wasn't until the January 6 debacle at the Capitol that the media rose to the occasion and sharpened its pens to attack the rightist wackos who accomplished nothing. But the left and the media screamed: "Insurrection!" These "Trumpers" were obviously planning to overthrow the government. Exactly how they could accomplish this has never been explained. 

I guess mobs are handy things, but it really depends on whose mob it is.

Crush Them All. Solzhenitsyn, in a masterful description of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of 1926 [GA, p. 60-67], shows his readers how this all-encompassing code could, in effect, convict anyone of anything or of nothing. For example, the interpretation of Section 10 of Article 58 was particularly broad. It stated:

Propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, subverting, or weakening of the Soviet power...and equally the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content [GA p. 66].

In describing Section 10's application, we are told:

The scope of "agitation containing an appeal" was enlarged to include face-to-face conversation between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter. The word "appeal" could mean personal advice...  "Subverting and weakening" the government could include any idea which did not coincide with or rise to the level of intensity of the ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day. After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken..."preparation of literary materials" covered every letter, note, or private diary...Thus, happily expanded, what thought was there, whether merely in the mind, spoken aloud, or jotted down, which was not covered by Section 10 [GA, p. 66].

Interestingly, Article 58 also treated the murder of a Party activist far more seriously than the murder of an ordinary citizen. Solzhenitsyn explains:

If a husband killed his wife's lover, it was very fortunate for him if the victim turned out not to be a Party member; he would be sentenced under Article 136 as a common criminal, who was a "social ally" and didn't require an armed escort. But if the lover turned out to have been a Party member, the husband became an enemy of the people with a 58-8 sentence [Article 58, Section 8 would likely result in execution instead of receiving a 10-year prison sentence. GA p.65]

Solzhenitsyn sums it well up by quoting the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky:

        And he who sings not with us today

            is against

                        us!

They go on to arrest the innocent, especially those who innocently speak the truth. Indeed, the very concept of guilt or innocence are "out of date concepts" that mean absolutely nothing. It's all related to the "social prophylaxis" mentioned in my previous post (Future Gulags -- Part II). One wasn't arrested for what one had done, but for what one might do. At the end of World War II, those Soviet citizens who had lived under German invading forces were given 10-year sentences, just as captured Soviet soldiers who were POWs were sent to prison for at least 10 years after they were liberated. 

Solzhenitsyn also mentioned Stalin’s apparent willingness to learn from Hitler when it came to Jews. Like his other internal targets, the innocence of Jewish citizens was ignored because of their “social origin” and their religion with its international presence. To be “cosmopolitan” was to be anti-Soviet, and a crime in itself. Solzhenitsyn describes another “wave” of arrests, this time of Jews.

During the last years of Stalin's life, a wave of Jews became noticeable. (Form 1950 on they were hauled in little by little as cosmopolitanites. And that was why the doctors' case was cooked up. It would appear that Stalin intended to arrange a great massacre of the Jews.) 

But this became the first plan of his life to fail. God told him -- apparently with the help of human hands -- to depart from his rib cage [GA, p. 92].

Yes, Stalin died in 1953, probably helped along on his journey by those tired of his capriciously deadly ways. 

Sadly, those who aide and abet the ideological left forget or have never thought about all of this. Once the revolutionary left seizes power, the first ones they come after are usually the liberals, those who helped them get there. These are the most dangerous, the ones who know too much, the ones who must be silenced, must be crushed. I’ve written about this in another post (Madness Rising) describing the dozen years preceding the 1917 Revolution.

It's All About Power and Evil. Solzhenitsyn addresses the first, as the motivator, and the second, and the underlying attitude. 

Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote [GA, p. 147].

And speaking specifically of those in the Soviet Security Services, those who had near-ultimate power over others, he writes:

You have a power over all the people in that military unit, or factory, or district, incomparably greater than that of a military commander, or factory director, or secretary of the district Communist Party.  These men control people's military or official duties, wages, reputations, but you control people's freedom [GA, p. 148].

As for the presence of evil and its perception by those captivated by it, Solzhenitsyn rejects the usual depictions of evildoers found in literature, citing Shakespeare, Dickens, and Schiller:

The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers...Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate...Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short of a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. [GA, p. 173]

Rejecting these literary evildoers, Solzhenitsyn then describes the very different kind of evil driven by ideology:

But no; that’s not the way it is. To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. [GA, p.173]

Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors...Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, not passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed those millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago. [GA, p. 174]

Only the ideologue can take an active part in the slaughter of millions and do so willingly and without remorse because his ideology justifies it. This is the danger of ideology, whether of the left or right. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Xi Jinping, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jung-un, and so many others, including their thousands of followers, are happy to kill entire populations so long as it supports their ideological ends. Ideology permits anything. In the same way the pro-abortion zealots — who perpetrate the lie by calling themselves “pro-choice” — inevitably align politically with leftist ideologues. As I have often stated, someone who supports abortion will support absolutely any evil.

Enough! 

Read Solzhenitsyn as he describes the last century and learn about the century we’re facing today. And as you read, pray for our world and its conversion. Only the hand of God can heal us.

Future Gulags - Part II

The following excerpts from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago describe just some of the ways and means through which the Russian Bolsheviks turned their nation into a communist slave state after taking power as a result of the 1917 revolution. These ways included the crushing of opposition parties, religious groups, professionals, academics, artists, etc. -- pretty much anyone who could in any way be perceived as a past, present, or future threat.

Elimination of opposition political parties. In Solzhenitsyn's words (GA, p. 34-35):

In 1921 the arrests of members of all non-Bolshevik parties was expanded and systematized. In fact, all Russia's political parties had been buried, except the victorious one. (Oh, do not dig a grave for someone else!) And so that the dissolution of these parties would be irreversible, it was necessary that their members should disintegrate and their physical bodies too.

Not one citizen of the former Russian state who had ever joined a party other than the Bolshevik Party could avoid his fate. He was condemned unless, like Maisky or Vyshinsky, he succeeded in making his way across the planks of the wreck to the Bolsheviks. [Both were former Mensheviks who managed to join the Bolsheviks.] He might not be arrested in the first group, depending on how dangerous he was believed to be, until 1922, 1927, or even 1937, but the lists were kept; his turn would and did come...

As Americans we live in a nation in which political opposition has generally been accepted, however grudgingly. We all believe we are right and our opponents are wrong. And yet, the free expression of ideas has always helped those on every side of an issue appreciate other points of view and tone down the extremes the people will wisely reject. Today we're encountering something very different, a vicious level of intolerance, one that seeks to muzzle those who don't agree with the ways of those in power. History shows us that such intolerance is never satisfied until opposing ideas are crushed into total silence.

Destruction and/or control of all religious groups. Like the official Catholic "church" in today's communist China, the Russian communists set up what they called the "Living Church" to gain control of all church apparatus, especially the prominent Russian Orthodox Church. From Solzhenitsyn (GA, p. 36-37):

 

The [Russian Orthodox] Patriarch Tikhon was arrested and two resounding trials were held, followed by the execution in Moscow of those who had publicized the Patriarch's appeal and, in Petrograd, of the Metropolitan Veniamin, who had attempted to hinder the transfer of ecclesiastical power to the "Living Church" group.

...as always, in the wake of the big fish, followed shoals of smaller fry: archpriests, monks, and deacons...They also arrested those who refused to swear to support the "Living Church" "renewal" movement.

The so-called "Eastern Catholics" -- followers of Vladimir Solovyev -- were arrested and destroyed in passing...And, of course, ordinary Roman Catholics -- Polish Catholic priests, etc. -- were arrested, too, as part of the normal course of events.

However, the root destruction of religion in the country, which throughout the twenties and thirties was one of the most important goals of the GPU-NKVD [Soviet Secret Police - 1922-1943], could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. Monks, nuns...were intensively rounded up on every hand, placed under arrest, and sent into exile [most often for slave labor in Siberian prisons and labor camps]. They arrested and sentenced active laymen...raked in ordinary believers as well, old people, and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all...A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children. [To pass their faith on to their children was considered a political crime; i.e., counterrevolutionary propaganda.]

As Tanya Khodkevich wrote:

You can pray freely

But just so God alone can hear.

She received a ten-year sentence for these verses.

Anything that ran counter to the official atheism of the Soviet state was considered counterrevolutionary.  

Jews were also persecuted, especially Zionists. Of course, perhaps the most famous incident was the 1952 "Doctors Case" in which Stalin arrested leading Kremlin physicians (almost all Jews) and accused them of trying to kill Soviet leaders. 

Religious believers, of course, were being arrested uninterruptedly...There was the "night of struggle against religion" in Leningrad on Christmas Eve, 1929, when they arrested a large part of the religious intelligentsia...Then in February, 1932, again in Leningrad, many churches were closed simultaneously, while at the same time, large-scale arrests were made of the clergy.

Yes, indeed, religion is abhorrent to totalitarians of all stripes because it claims for God the allegiance of those who should worship only the state.

When I hear of government officials at any level trying to control religious worship in any way, or infringing on the Constitutional right of the "free exercise" of religious faith, I believe all Americans must speak up. One interesting example of anti-religious bigotry involved a member of Congress who claimed that those who were against abortion were racists, white supremacists who must be silenced. There is, of course, a strange irony here, since the nation's premier provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood, was founded by Margaret Sanger on racist principles to eliminate the undesirable races. 

There are so many other instances that I expect religious persecution will continue and grow.

[Note: Vladimir Solovyev, whom Solzhenitsyn mentioned above, wrote a fascinating and remarkably prophetic book, Tale of the Anti-Christ. It's certainly worth a read. In fact, I first heard of Solovyev and this book from a talk Pope Benedict XVI gave years ago.]

Persecution based on "social origin." Those descended from former noble families, or the intelligentsia, including those who simply went to universities were arrested in waves. From Solzhenitsyn (GA, p. 40-43):

And so the waves rolled on -- for "concealment of social origin" and for "former social origin." This received the widest interpretation. They arrested members of the nobility for their social origin. They arrested members of their families. Finally, unable to draw even simple distinctions, they arrested members of the "individual nobility" -- i.e., anybody who had simply graduated from a university. And once they had been arrested, there was no way back. You can't undo what has been done! The Sentinel of the Revolution never makes a mistake!

The state organs of terror called this effort "social prophylaxis" or the need to eliminate those who might resist because of their social origin. And then, throughout the twenties and thirties, historians and other scholars were arrested, and for good reason. They knew the truth, you see, and getting rid of them made the job of rewriting Russian and world history much easier. Look at our colleges and universities today, and you will find the percentage of Marxist professors significantly higher than those who claim to be conservative. Yes, our young people are receiving a Marxist-inspired education in which historical distortion has replaced truth.

The Soviets did not concern themselves with truth or with guilt or innocence. As one leader of a major slave labor project stated to one of his more educated political prisoners: "I believe that you personally were not guilty of anything. But, as an educated person, you have to understand that social prophylaxis was being widely applied." In other words, we don't care if you're innocent or guilty, the sentence is the same. Solzhenitsyn relates a typical example:

Several dozen young people got together for some kind of musical evening which had not been authorized ahead of time by the GPU. They listened to music and then drank tea. They got the money for the tea by contributing their own kopeks. It was quite clear, of course, that the music was a cover for counterrevolutionary sentiments, and that the money was being collected not for tea but to assist the dying world bourgeoisie. And they were all arrested and given three to ten years -- Anna Skripnikova getting five, while Ivan Nikolayevich Varentsov and the other organizers of the affair who refused to confess were shot!

Of course, these young people really met just to listen to music and drink tea, simply to be together and enjoy each other's company. But given their innate paranoia, the secret police always assume such meetings can only be for nefarious purposes. The arrests and executions also serve as effective warnings to others: we are watching and listening to everything. 

Ask General Michael Flynn, USMC, whether as the President's prospective National Security Advisor, he could take part in a routine phone call with the Russian Ambassador and not be accused of treason. 

Better be careful, folks -- well, those of you who haven't yet been canceled: Exactly what have you been saying on all those Zoom meetings?

That's enough for now. More in a future post. 

 

Future Gulags

In a recent post I offered a brief description of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's classic examination of the ruthless and brutal persecution of the Russian people perpetrated by the communist authorities after the revolution of 1917 -- The Gulag Archipelago (hereafter abbreviated as GA). Millions were killed, imprisoned, or exiled during the decades that followed and Solzhenitsyn, as one of the survivors, had the passion and the spirit to conduct the difficult research in complete and necessary secrecy, and the courage to tell the story.

I also included just a sampling of some of the recent comments made by those on our political left, comments that are reminiscent of the attitudes that drove the thinking of the communists who so fervently slaughtered and imprisoned so many Russians. How sad that those on the left seem to despise the protections of religion, speech, and press, among others, provided by our nation's Constitution.

In truth, there's little difference between the totalitarians of either left or right. They both believe the state should control all aspects of people's lives -- they are, after all, totalitarians -- but there are some differences in practice, particularly related to the way they view and handle a society's means of production. Communists despise the idea of private property and corporate ownership and believe the state should own pretty much everything. Of course, once government bureaucrats take over an industry, thus eliminating all competition and any incentive to succeed, the industry descends into gross inefficiency and chaos. Fascists are actually a bit (but only a bit) smarter since they realize total government control would likely destroy any industry. They, therefore, allow private companies to run their businesses efficiently but demand subservience. Adolph Hitler, for example, didn't have to nationalize Krupp, I. G. Farben, Siemens, Daimler-Benz, and so many others. All he had to do was threaten them and they willingly did his bidding. Armed troops outside the front door of a business or a home can be an effective motivator.

We're starting to see signs of this among our hi-tech giants who do the bidding of the liberal establishment by "canceling" those who disagree with the prevailing ideology. The threat? Be good or the first thing we'll do is repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and allow anyone to sue you for what someone else says about them on one of your platforms. Oh, yes, we can also apply a host of anti-trust legislation and break your big company up into a slew of smaller, more easily controlled firms. There’s so much we can do to you.

Are the "leftists" who have infected Congress, government agencies, academia, big business, and the media really on the political left, or are they more closely aligned with the far right? It actually makes little difference since both extremes have similar ends -- control of others through the expansion and application of power -- and use similar means to achieve them. Solzhenitsyn makes this point often enough when, for example, he compares the ruthless application of power by both Hitler and Stalin, and their minions.

In writing the truth about what his country and its people endured, Solzhenitsyn offers us many prophetic insights. I certainly don't intend to relate them all, but hope only to show that the disturbing things we are experiencing and hearing now are nothing new. We must be wary, or this "one nation, under God" could easily lead to the end visualized by James Burnham in his 1964 book, Suicide of the West.

Let me conclude this post with a comment by Solzhenitsyn in which he describes the legal means put in place and implemented by the Soviet communist government, a new form of justice necessary if they hoped to carry out their brutal persecution:

"And so an entirely new form was adopted: extrajudicial reprisal, and this thankless job was self-sacrificingly assumed by the Cheka, the Sentinel of the Revolution, which was the only punitive organ in human history that combined in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial, and execution of the verdict" GA...p. 28.

It was called “reprisal” because it’s primary purpose was to rid the society of real and potential political opponents of the Bolsheviks. It was a form of political cleansing driven as much by revenge as by necessity. Sound familiar? And when I hear of the secrecy and obvious extra-legal actions of federal law enforcement and its involvement with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court, I can’t help but think that perhaps we’ve taken a first step toward the “extrajudicial” approach taken by those communist revolutionaries. 

In my next post I hope to show how that which began in Russia a century ago merely foreshadowed some of what we are witnessing today.

Gulags, Past and Present

Note: This post is the first of several that will address a book first published almost 50 years ago and its author's prophetic insights into our world today.  

-------------------------

As usual, I’m involved in re-reading a book I first read years ago. It’s one of those books that many people bought because it received so much publicity when it first appeared, and they thought it would look good on their bookshelves. Written by a Nobel laureate, it was, however, non-fiction, quite long, and filled with pages of tedious, highly disturbing facts...so most of those who bought it never actually read it. This is a shame since it offers a detailed description of the blueprint followed by totalitarians of the left and the right once they take the reins of political power. 

The book? Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Its three volumes have been published in paperback editions, but the first two volumes are also available in a single hardcover. For those who might balk at reading this long work in its original entirety, an authorized abridged edition has been published. My copy Is the hardcover edition containing the unabridged Volumes 1 and 2, which I purchased shortly after it was first published back in 1973. Just an FYI: here’s a link to a used copy of the edition I own: The Gulag Archipelago. I’m sure you can find other, newer, and less expensive editions.

Before he turned his talents to researching and documenting the history of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union’s brutal treatment of its own citizens by Lenin, Stalin, and their toadies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was already a highly respected best-selling novelist. His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) gives us a glimpse of the horrors of the Siberian Gulag by telling the story of one man's struggle against the dehumanizing evils of Soviet communism. Among his other novels, I managed to read In the First Circle (1968), Cancer Ward (1968), and August 1914 (1971). As I recall, I read all of these novels while at sea during my Navy years. There was no TV aboard ship and certainly no Internet in those days, so when I wasn’t working, flying, sleeping, or eating, I could usually find an hour or two to read.

But it was Solzhenitsyn's great non-fiction work, The Gulag Archipelago, that for me had its greatest impact. It's one thing to read a work of fiction, even one based on and reflecting historical realities, but it's quite another to encounter the lives and deaths of thousands of real people with real names and real families, human beings devoured by a system of almost unspeakable evil. 

Both historian and prophet, Solzhenitsyn’s painstaking research presents his readers with the reality of communist ideology brought to life...or, perhaps more accurately, to death. He pulls no punches, and as we read we encounter the logical consequence of atheistic materialism, the culmination of a socialism that denies the sanctity of life and deifies the state. Solzhenitsyn bares the truth of the communist state as a cruel, demanding, capricious, and unforgiving god. In 1985 he summed it all up:

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then, I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by the upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as precisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

To read The Gulag Archipelago is to come to the undeniable conclusion that communism is nothing less than Satanic. And the sad truth is that so-called “democratic socialism” too often chooses to follow a similar path because to maintain its grip on political power socialist governments demand universal acceptance. Those who disagree must be silenced, one way or another.

I was led to turn once again to Solzhenitsyn's book after listening to some rather shrill comments made by Biden administration folks, some members of Congress, media pundits, and others who seem to have embraced rather unsettling approaches to dealing with their political opponents. Some examples:

• President Joe Biden seemed to dismiss the Islamist terrorism that has threatened our civilization over that past few decades, and decided to focus instead on "domestic terrorism" by means of executive order. By this, of course, he doesn't mean the months of destructive attacks, the riots, and the deaths perpetrated by far left groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. No, the president is focused on supporters of his predecessor, Donald Trump...you know, that collection of a few hundred January 6 wackos accused of trying to overthrow the government by means of an unarmed insurrection. Interestingly, beginning the day of his inauguration, Antifa and its allies have been rioting every night, continuing to work their destructive ways in our cities, but we hear not a word about it from the Biden administration. One gets the impression that the only folks deemed to be "terrorists" are conservative political opponents of Joe Biden.
  

• David Atkins, newly elected as a California member of the Democratic National Committee, told his Democrat colleagues to "start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan" so that we can "deprogam 75 million people" -- presumably speaking of Trump voters. Of course, such deprogramming can succeed only if its targets (victims?) are denied access to their usual sources of news and information. In other words, deprogramming demands a significant degree of censorship and the elimination of the Constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, among others. 

• Shortly before election day, Keith Olberman, former MSNBC anchor, let loose with another of his mindless rants:

"Trump must be defeated...and his enablers, and his supporters...must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society." 

Heavens! All 75 million of them? He advocates prosecuting American citizens for supporting and voting for a particular candidate. Olbermann’s a very scary guy, but fortunately I don’t think too many people actually listen to him...one hopes.

• Washington Post columnist, Jennifer Rubin, a "Never Trumper" who labels herself a Republican, used Twitter to tell the world that any of those Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results must be disqualified from public office and ostracized from society:

"Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into 'polite' society."

Personally, I really don't think I'd want to be accepted into Rubin's idea of polite society. It sounds horribly impolite. It also begs the question: What about all those Democrats who rejected the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections? How about it, Jennifer, can we eject them from your polite society too? Oh, wait a minute...that would probably include you.

• Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) believes that all Trump voters should automatically be suspects for a domestic terrorist attack and should be looked at by law enforcement. Cohen was especially concerned about all those National Guardsmen who probably voted for Turmp and were assigned to protect the Capitol. Can you imagine? We must protect the nation from all those conservative, patriotic, military folks who risked their lives to protect Steve Cohen and the rest of us from the global terrorist threat because...well, they might morph into domestic terrorists.  

• And then the nation — OK, just a tiny slice of the nation — watched Katie Couric (I really didn’t know she was still around) on Bill Maher’s HBO show as she jumped on the “deprogram the conservatives” bandwagon: 

“I mean, it’s really bizarre, isn’t it, when you think about how AWOL so many members of Congress have gotten. But I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the Internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie...And the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.” 

For Katie and her friends, to disagree with them on policy or candidates is to commit a political mortal sin, one that demands repentance and conversion, apparently by interventionist means if necessary.

• Finally, we have Michael Beller, a staff PBS attorney, who not only suggested tossing Molotov cocktails at the Trump White House, and added:

“We go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away...We’ll put them into the re-education camps.” 

His comments, which were recorded and leaked by a conservative group, were so over the top that PBS actually fired him...at least for now.

I could offer dozens more, but these suffice to make my point. Reading them calls me back to Solzhenitsyn as he describes many of the attitudes that led to the horrific reality of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. More on that in my next post.