MiSTED: Communism Will Make Life Better 2
The Happy SP2
Crow: Oh my God. Mike, this is more than one human and two automats can take!
I had no idea someone other than Bill Clinton or Rush Limbaugh could put so much
crap into such a small space!
Tom: Yeah! Not only that, but I didn't think a system of Government, ANY
system of Government, could be as boring as this one seems to be. What gives?!
Mike: I don't know, guys. I was never very good at civics, anyway. But I
think the problem is, like you said, Tom, it's just plain boring. And I was
thinking, as a mental exercise for you two, if you could tell me how YOU wopuld
make Communism less boring and more attractive to the common American.
Tom: Oh, I know! Me, me, me!
Mike: Okay, Crow, you go ahead!
Tom: (Miffed) Hey!!
Mike: (Laughs) I'm just kidding. You go on, Tom.
Tom: Okay, here's my idea. First, I'd move all Communist countries to
someplace nice like Tampa Bay, Florida, Chapel Hill, North Carolina or Oshkosh,
Wisconsin. Then, I'd get rid of those stupid uniforms they have to wear and
issue ever Party member a genuine imitation Elvis jumpsuit. I mean, nothing says
fun and frivolity like a sequined, shining example of the King's finest. Then,
after that, I'd have them trade their Mao and Marx books for some Jack Kerouac,
Henry Miller and Ken Kesley volumes. I'd make "Catcher In The Rye" required
reading, change the Communist national pasttime from starving and dying of
exposure to eating tacos and taping "Murder One". Yep, I'd have the swingingest
Socialist system this side of Little Rock.
Mike: That's sounds almost good enough to join, Tom. How 'bout you, Crow?
Crow: Well, I think I would base my Communist ideal on those old Andy Hardy
movies of the 20's and 40's. It would be run by a benevolent Dad, usually me,
and an all-knowing Mom, preferably Anna-Nicole Smith. Other Party honchos would
include Pamela Anderson, Kim Cattrall, Estelle Winwood and Kathy Ireland.
Oh, and for laughs, I'd have truckloads of Tibby the turtles flown in just to
step on 'em!
Tom: Wh-what?!
Crow: Oh, shut up! Then, as the all-seeing, omnipresent Dad, I'd have my
underlings, that's you and Tom, Mike-
Tom: Now just a min-
Crow: Go out and build forts in the snow so we could have a bitchin' snowball
fight, and then we ride our saucer sleds 'till it got real late (getting more
excited and breathy) an' then we'd play Nerf football in the snow an' stuff and
come in after dark and have some Swiss Miss cocoa with mini marshmallows and
watch TV and play with our Red Army men an' then watch Johnny Carson's monlogue
an'-
Mike: Okay, I get it. (Muzzling Crow) Those are some really good ideas, guys.
It's just a shame that in the cold, cruel world, any system of Government which
seeks to take away the right of people to be individuals, can only come to cause
suffering and humiliation to everyone involved.
Tom: Oh, THANK you, Moms Mabley! Now do ya wanna hear how I'd make Nazi
Germany a lot more fun?!
TEXT SIGN
Mike: Maybe later, we got text sign!!
THIS IS PART 2
> That is the Big Lie the capitalists put forward.
TOM: Wasn't that the sequel to "The Big Chill"?
MIKE: No, that was "The Big Valley".
TOM: Oh, I-HUH?!
> The capitalists say workers hate communism and love capitalism.
CROW: Come on, they don't really say that, do they?
TOM: One did, I think.
MIKE: Yeah, I'm pretty sure one did.
CROW: Okay, I stand corrected.
>This is not only incorrect, it's downright silly when you think about it.
TOM: Urkel's popularity is also downright silly.
CROW: And the fact that people actually pay to see Gallagher.
MIKE: And let's not forget this whole Drew Barrymore thing.
CROW: Yeah.
TOM: Hey! She was masterful in *Poison Ivy*
MIKE: Uh, whatever Tom.
>As we pointed
> out earlier, the communist-led revolutions of the past 75 years
> established socialist, not communist, systems in the various
> countries.
MIKE: I think they're splitting errors, here.
CROW: Oh, good one, Mike.
>Under socialism everyone was guaranteed a job.
TOM: Except Don Rickles.
CROW: Wow! The communists have some good points!
>Private ownership of factories was outlawed,
MIKE: Bill Gates was burned in effigy!
BOTS: Yay!
>but there was still money and some workers got higher wages than others.
CROW: Those who looked good in tutus, for instance, commanded top dollar.
TOM: Let's not forget the tap dancers.
>Still, all the value
MIKE: Is what you get, when you buy Coronet.
>produced in a factory went to the workers -- either as wages
TOM: Of sin.
>or as
>investment in other things that would benefit the working class
CROW: Beer, pool tables, bowling alleys, 19-inch television sets and pick-up
trucks.
>(schools, hospitals, new factories, roads, etc.)
TOM: Were all built in the U.S.
>Under socialism there was much less inequality than under capitalism.
MIKE: People were free to inform on their neighors, parents and friends.
TOM: Free to have their doors broken down in the middle of the night.
CROW: Free to be carted off and never seen alive again.
MIKE: Free to spend their leisure time in a labor camp in Minsk.
ALL: Yes! Socialism was all of this and more!
>It took a generation
CROW: of swine.
>or two
ALL [singing]: Cocktails for two!
>for the small bit of capitalism (differences in private wages)
>carried forward into the new socialist society to grow into a new
>exploiting class.
TOM: But the new "exploiting class" has twice as much legroom as the old
exploiting class.
>Was it the greater equality, the workers' control of
>government, in short, was it the revolutionary aspects of socialism
>that workers rejected?
MIKE: Well, I, uh......
>Of course not.
MIKE: Geesh! Give someone a chance to answer, willya?!
>The rejection would have
>happened at the time of the revolutions not a generation
TOM: The Pepsi Generation
>or two later had that been the case.
CROW: So what he's saying is, that Prince and The Revolution was rejected by the
New Power Generation later that had been the case?!
TOM: Uh, something like that, Crow.
MIKE: Who knows? Let's get back to this blowhard.
>Those who actually lived through the
TOM: sixties remember it as a time of wild, unbirdled-
CROW and MIKE: Stop it right now!
>revolutions, those who helped build the new socialist societies, were
>willing to defend them--with their lives if necessary.
CROW: But, it was easier to use other people's lives.
>As the Nazi troops closed in on Moscow,
TOM [as Richard Burton]: The seige of Moscow lasted for two years.
>threatening the heart of the first socialist country the world had seen,
MIKE: Most could not have care less.
>the determination of the rank-and-file Russians was remarkable:
TOM: Thousands quit their jobs and headed for the hills.
>There were countless stories of regular soldiers and even opolchentsy
>[civilian volunteers] attacking German tanks with hand grenades and
>with "petrol bottles", and other "last ditch" exploits.
TOM: But, for their brave yet stupid efforts . . .
CROW: these idiots were slaughtered by the tens of thousands.
TOM: Not quite how I put it, but thanks.
>The morale of
MIKE: Malapropism alert!
>Of the story is......
>the fighting forces certainly did not crack....
CROW: Crack?! Ha-
MIKE: No, Crow. Don't even THINK about it.
TOM: Yeah, *I'm* supposed to make the rude comments here.
>Secondly, there was the Moscow working-class;
TOM: Fat, with beer-stained T-shirts, all watching "Alice" on TBS.
>most of them were ready to put in long hours
>of overtime in factories producing armaments and ammunition;
CROW: Overtime?! Wait a minute, Mike, I thought wages didn't matter to these
people.
MIKE: Well, they had to do something to get them into the factories at all
hours, you know. So, I think they just used the word, "overtime" as sort of a
carrot, an incentive, so to speak.
CROW: Oh, just like over here.
TOM: But isn't there unpaid overtime, Mike? How would they get people in then?
MIKE: If that was the case, lost of job and respect was a powerful incentive as
well.
CROW: Like I said, just like over here.
>to build defenses;
TOM: To build those neat little forts out of cardboard refridgerator boxes.
>to fight the Germans inside Moscow should they break
>through,
TOM: and climb their way to the top of the charts.
>or, if all failed, to "follow the Red Army to the east".
>And the Nazis were stopped.
CROW: Not once, but several times, on the two yard line.
>They were turned back from the gates of
MIKE: Hell?!
>Moscow
MIKE: Oh.
>that year (1941) and the main force of their army was broken a
>year later at Stalingrad.
TOM [Monty Python sketch voice]: Vat do you mean ist not Schtalingrad?!
CROW: Shut yer cake-hole, ya Nazi.
MIKE: Cool it, Furher-cat!
>The Russian working class defeated Nazi
>fascism at great cost.
CROW: $315.72, to be exact.
>Fifteen years later
MIKE: Angus Potgorny became the first Scotsmen to win Wimbilton.
>capitalism in a new, more insidious form had defeated the Russian revolution.
TOM: And the crowd went wild.
All: Yay!
>The process of re-growth of capitalism out of socialism (it's called
>"state capitalism")
TOM: Hey! I know my "state capitalisms". Let's see, Albany, New York,
Augusta, Maine, Atlanta, Georgia-
MIKE: Okay, Tom, we believe you.
CROW: Show-off.
>was full-blown in the Soviet Union by the late 1950s
TOM: The "Happy Days".
MIKE: If you were Joe McCarthey.
CROW: I dunno, I kinda wish he gotten around to these guys.
TOM: Yeah, me too.
MIKE: Guys, I am shocked. The main reason for freedom of speech is so the
idiots don't become martyrs.
CROW: What about all that stuff about rights and all?
MIKE: Well, for the time being, my explanation will do.
BOTS: Oh.
>and in China by the mid 1970s.
CROW: The "Crappy Days".
TOM: You said it.
MIKE: Disco ruined an entire decade.
>This transformation came from the very center
TOM: The very creamy noughet center.
>of the revolutions themselves, from the very communist
>parties which had lead the building of socialism earlier.
CROW: Yeah, I'm sure the thousands of people protesting in the streets in
Czechslovakia and other countries had absolutely NOTHING to do with it.
>But these transformations were also not without struggle.
MIKE: I HATE that little bear on those Struggle commercials.
TOM: Uh, no, Mike, that's SNUGGLE!
MIKE: Oh! (Sheepish) I forgot.
>The Cultural
>Revolution in China was the biggest and longest such battle.
CROW: It lasted well over three days.
TOM: It was a real bitch arresting all those traitors to the prolitariat.
>The PLP
MIKE: "PLP", again. "Power-Less Prolitariat"?!
TOM: "People Loving Pork"?!
CROW: "Peace, Love and Prosperity"?!
TOM: We wish.
MIKE: Who knows and who cares?!
CROW: I agree.
>came into existence in the US as the embodiment of the struggle
>against capitalist
TOM: Da struggle against da white Devil slavemasta!
>ideas inside the old communist movement in this
>country.
CROW [Groucho Marx]: An' if you've evah seen the inside of an old Communist
movement, believe me, you'll want nothin' more t' do with it.
>For 40 years
TOM [Singing]: We've been on our own, a generation lost in.......STONE?!
MIKE: Nice try, Servo.
>in the USSR and 25 years in China, several hundred
>million people lived under governments controlled by the working
>class.
CROW: And several hundred million more who callously destroyed, like so much
pinewood.
>Nearly a billion
TOM: Hamburgers were sold last year alone.
>working people experienced
MIKE: A comfortable night's sleep for the first time in years.
>socialism over a period of decades, but they never tried communism,
CROW: Try it, you'll like it!
>much less rejected it.
TOM: They just wanted nothing to do with it.
>As for loving capitalism,
MIKE: You just can't help yourself.
CROW [singing]: You made me love you, I didn't want to do it . . .
>the popular anti-government movements
TOM: Were all sponsored by Ex-Lax.
>in the USSR and Eastern Europe beginning in the late 1980s
TOM: Glitter Rock had reached its zenith.
CROW: Silly, glitter rock reached that zenith in the *70's*
> brought about
> a change in the form of capitalism from a state monopoly capitalism to
> "free market" capitalism.
MIKE: And so forth and so on.
>It is crucial to understand, however, that
MIKE [singing]: I'm a magic man!
>the essence of capitalism,
CROW: Make as much money in as little time as possible.
>exploitation of the working class
TOM: Is a time-honored tradition.
>by a privileged elite (capitalists),
TOM: Well, I've never heard of anyone exploited by an UNprivileged elite.
CROW: Me, either.
>had returned to
ALL [singing]: Sender!
>these countries with
>the development of state capitalism in the 1950s.
MIKE: Ran parallel to the development of Annette Funicello.
TOM: Ohhhhhhhhh, it's a conspiracy.
>There had been no
> socialist society in Eastern Europe for at least a generation by the
> time the Berlin wall fell in 1991.
CROW: There was, however, oppressive Socialists Governments.
>Many skilled workers and professionals in Eastern Europe saw the
>conversion from state capitalism to a more open market capitalism
>beginning in the late 80s as an opportunity to break the monopoly on
>power and profits held by Breshnev-era technocrats--a group who have
>nothing to do with socialism, much less communism.
MIKE: Other skilled workers and professionals protested the constant use of
run-on sentences.
>After all, does
>anyone maintain that these guys believed in the principle of communism
>stated by Karl Marx: "from each according to ability, to each
>according to need?"
TOM: Yeah. I do!
CROW: Me, too!
MIKE: Yep. Right here!
>Of course not.
TOM: That's YOUR opinion.
CROW: Why should we listen you? You not only glossed over the oppressive parts
of the Russian and Chinese system, but you used "way" as a modifier and
constant run-on sentences.
>They wore the mantle of socialism
CROW: The MICKEY Mantle of socialism!
TOM: Santa shall have the mantle of immortality.
>as long as it could keep them in limousines and caviar,
TOM: Who, Van Halen?!
>then they
>became "democrats"
CROW: I thought only Republicans were rich.
TOM: You never heard of a "limousine Liberal"?!
>faster than you could sell bad stock!
TOM: How the hell would they know about stock?
>And those who led the popular uprisings
TOM: Like Robespierre.
CROW: Or Ronald Reagan.
MIKE: Ronald Reagan?! He didn't lead any popular uprisings!
CROW: Oh yeah?! Never heard of the "Reagan Revolution"?!
MIKE: Why you, I oughta-
CROW: Back to the text, Mike! At least with these guys we have a common enemy.
>which overthrew these cynical crooks
TOM [Nixon]: I am NOT a cynical crook.
>are
>every bit as cynical and crooked,
TOM: There was a crooked cynic.
>as workers throughout the formerly socialist countries are learning.
CROW: Americans knew 200 years ago.
>So what would happen if workers tried actual communism?
MIKE: They'd be driving in small, cheap cars, standing in long lines everywhere
we went and living with two and three other families in cramped, crowded
apartments.
TOM: They'd also be wearing those dull grey clothes and those ridiculous hats
with the star in the middle.
CROW: Yeah. In other words, it would suck.
>Where workers came closest to a system of real economic and political
>equality
TOM: Was at the Mexico City Olympics, 1968.
>(egalitarian communism) they liked it and resisted changing back to
>more capitalistic forms.
CROW: It had a smooth, minty taste that workers love.
>These struggles are, of course, not well
>publicized in the West,
TOM: In other words, they didn't happen.
>but they have been recorded by reliable observers.
MIKE: Yeah, there's nothing more reliable than Pravda or Tass.
>The dismantling of a "higher level socialist cooperative
>farm"
MIKE: I once dismantled a "higher level socialist cooperative ant farm" in my
room. Boy, were my parents ticked off, too.
CROW: I really can't blame them, Mike.
TOM: Yeah, I'd be pissed, too.
MIKE: Yeah, I should have known better I guess.
>in Shansi province in northern China
TOM: Dogs were lunch and rats, a delicacy.
>(similar to the communes
>discussed under question No. 1)
CROW: But we've long fogotten about those comments.
>was described by another section of Hinton's Shenfan:
MIKE: I wonder if that has anything to do with "Clinton's Folly"?
TOM: You mean Gennifer Flowers?!
CROW: DUHHHH-OO!
>[T]he Changchih City Party Committee
TOM: Won first prize in the gym and float decoration contest.
>did mobilize Veteran Wang,
TOM: Mike, have YOU ever mobilized your Veteran Wan-
MIKE: I'm warning you, Crow!
>working in the rural affairs department of the city, to dissolve coops
>that he himself had set up. He recalled this, in 1971, as a bitter
>experience.
MIKE: Yeah. I agree with him there. 1971 WAS a bitter experience. You know,
third grade can be pretty depressing.
CROW: I wouldn't know, I'm a robot.
>"When asked to organize coops
TOM: C. Everett Coops?!
CROW: No silly, the *Harvard Coops*
MIKE [in Brahmin accent]: "Workers of the store unite, you have naught to lose
but your textbooks."
>we were determined to get them running well.
TOM [Singing]: Running, running like the demon that drives your night!
MIKE: Tom. That is the LAST time you'll use a "Hardcastle And McCormack"
reference, understand?!
TOM: Hey, what can I say? it was one of my favorite show!
>We all worked hard and did good work.
TOM: You all get gold stars on your foreheads.
CROW: Yet redundancy had no meaning.
>When higher-ups suddenly
>ordered us to do the opposite, to go out and dissolve coops,
TOM: Chicken coops?!
CROW: Who would want to dissolve one of those, anyway?!
>we went out with a heavy heart." (p. 161)
MIKE: Now he's LBJ, all of a sudden.
>The P'ingshun County Committee put great pressure on labor hero Li
>Hsun-ta's West Gully coop
CROW: By the shores of Gichee-Goomie.
>... to break into smaller units
TOM: To enjoy all day.
>... but the people of West Gully
CROW: Did the Hully Gully.
>refused to abandon what they had already built.
MIKE: They built excitement.
>"We joined together of our own free will," they said.
TOM: Well, that and a loaded revolver.
>"If we split that must also be voluntary. Nobody can force us to separate."
> ...
TOM: Nothing but that same revolver.
They cancel a message--ten more messages spring up.
They send a court order--ten more home pages dedicated to their trickery spring
up.
They raid a critic's house--ten more critics spring up.
read alt.religion.scientology to find out the truth.