I intended to post something right after the election day, but got too busy, dealing, in part, with my emotions.

Yes, I did get very emotional about the election and even shed some tears - and I’m not ashamed of it.

The last eight years I felt like living in a strange unreal world, some kind of nightmare that I should wake up from and suddenly see the world that makes some sense again.

In a way sometimes it created flashbacks back to some features of our life in Soviet Union. A profoundly illogical, ideologically driven half-wit (sorry, quarter-wit) leader - just like in the USSR. The gang in power, creating policies based on the desire to dominate the world and force their ideals on whoever they could - almost a clone of Soviet situation and policies. The application of an economic theory, based on the completely outdated and idealistic principles - again the same picture, just replace Karl Marx with Adam Smith.

I’m not attempting to present any analysis, there are already many articles and books on the subject. I just want to explain, may be to myself, why I’m so happy it’s over. And why I happily voted for Obama, although I don’t completely agree with some of his positions.

It in part has to do with the fact, that McCain’s (mostly of his team, I have to say) style of arguing about his opponent’s abilities and character were reminiscent, at least for me, of the ways the Soviet system was dealing with so called “enemies of Soviet State”. Anti-American in one case, anti-Soviet in other. Same crap, same stink.

I was the kind of “optimist” that says “It couldn’t get worse” - and I was right. Hopefully I’d be able to live the rest of my life without the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfovitz and others like them in power. May be I’m too positive (time for some Negative Thinking?)

One of the most upsetting revelations that I started getting  in the last years of Clinton presidency was the far-right, ultra-conservative, pro Bush/Cheney ideological orientation of the majority of my fellow Russian immigrants. Many well educated, intelligent people not excluded. See my post: Jazz Musicians, Russian Immigrants…

It is well known that some kinds of Ideology, just like religious beliefs, exist in partial or even complete isolation from real reasoning processes in the brain. Holding beliefs that contradict reason is one of the manifestations of cognitive dissonance, that always seeks some kind of resolution. Way too often instead of adjusting or changing beliefs in accordance with the facts and reasoning based on them, people actively search for the facts supporting their beliefs (often inventing these facts), and suppress the perception of facts that contradict them.

After enduring years of Soviet ideology, perceived   as far-left, constantly pushed on them, most Russian immigrants automatically accepted far-right ideology as a panacea. Everything a little bit to the left of far right seemed like socialist influence. For me it looks similar to Soviet authorities perceiving jazz as capitalist and the enemy of Soviet society.

When I just came to the States, I wasn’t interested in politics at all, busy with my music and just plain survival. I was very slow to get friends and contacts in Russian community and didn’t discuss politics with those I became close to.

First big surprise for me came during 2000 election. My first impression of Bush (that later proved to be correct) was of a person of very limited intelligence with an overblown feeling of self-importance and God-given purpose of saving.. whatever. I saw “DANGER” posted over his head as a halo. I was absolutely shocked when decent, respected by me Russians one after another started expressing their admiration and intention to vote for him!

He won and they still liked him, although he very soon became the laughing stock of many in the States and all over the world. Then came 9/11 and his glaring shortcomings were not of the major importance for a while… until he started planning the Iraq war. Once more there was a divide between a small group of my friends being against this war and the overwhelming majority of Russians for it.

Things became really ugly - all those opposing the war were pronounced anti-American, unpatriotic and even enemies of the State (just like those in the USSR that opposed the invasion of Hungary in the 50s).

All the Bush screw-ups didn’t change much in the minds of Russian community republicans. At least they almost stopped calling everybody that didn’t agree with them traitors.

The last election woke up the snakes and the hyenas. I didn’t pay much attention to them until I started getting mass mailings from some Russians. The ratio of facts to name calling, vicious attacks, plain lies, vague hints of the desire of the opponent to destroy America was close to zero. Obama was, of course, the main target of this vile logorrhea.

One of the first preachers of hate and fear was already discussed on this blog Leon Weinstein. His “essays” were sent to me so many times, that I just couldn’t take it any more. I tried to respond to some of those who sent me his stuff and got (what else) the advice to go back to the country of my origin! Which is Russia, by the way, and isn’t the same country I came from anymore.

And then came Victor Topaller! Weinstein is just an apprentice, compared to this pillar of pseudo-Americanism and anti-almost-everything. In his sick mind Teddy Roosevelt was the first socialist, FDR caused the Great Depression, anybody that has an opinion even slightly deviating from his is either a terrorist, communist or an idiot. And the most amazing thing - he is extremely popular among Russians!

Time to celebrate and be happy - and may be even shed some happy tears - reason and compassion finally overcame fear and hate.

There is no way to deny that we’ve witnessed (and some helped) one of the most important elections in USA history, marking the end of Dark Ages!

Finally,  I can’t really avoid feeling enormous joy thinking about the feelings Obama’s victory aroused in Leon, Victor and other fake patriots.

Eat it, Leon Weinstein! Eat it Victor Topaller! Be careful not to choke on your hate!

When I just moved to the States, I was amazed at the number of books, magazines and events dedicated to self-improvement of every possible kind. From esoteric mystical ways of New Age gurus and movements to very pragmatic teachings how to get rich through becoming a better human money-making machine, everything was pushing the idea of the necessity of personal growth. And buying books, tapes, and going to expensive seminars. Not a bad idea and definitely not a bad business.

Being interested in inner human potential and some methods like meditation and self-hypnosis for years, even before coming to the States, I immediately got sucked right into this vortex. I still have a large shelf of books on many of these subjects.

It took me some time to start understanding what had some value in all these teachings and what was just junk. “90% of everything is crap”, said Theodore Sturgeon. This is absolutely true about all these self-improvement ideas also, although in this particular case the ratio is probably closer to 96% (or more). I’d like to believe I was able to distill some very useful ideas and discard all trash.

So called “positive thinking” always plays a very important role in every self-improvement method. Norman Vincent Peale wrote an extremely successful book, called “The Power of Positive Thinking”, but the idea itself was introduced many years (or even centuries) before him.

Here is a quote that sums positive thinking (of this sort) quite nicely: “It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.”

Compare that with Ambrose Bierce’s definition of future: “That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.”

Sounds like a parody on positive thinking to me!

The notion of self esteem is closely related to positive thinking. Another quote:  ”Positive thinking definitely improves your self-esteem. When you look at the world with a positive outlook, you will definitely feel like you can accomplish anything.”

OK, enough of quotes and definitions, or you might think that I’m presenting myself as another self-improvement guru. I am definitely not. I just want to argue that positive thinking as defined above, could have negative effect. As could blown up self-esteem.

Well, I wanted this post to be more about music, but I guess I’ll have to devote a separate post to what I call “Negative creativity”, the method I was practically forced to use in music. I hope to have the next post ready in a few days.

Back to positive thinking and self-esteem.

It looks to me that we don’t need self-esteem that is either higher or lower than a correct one. Considering that both your abilities and self-esteem are dynamic, changing in time, to maintain the right balance, you not only need a constant self-evaluation, but also should pay attention to your evaluation by others (although the latter - as well as the former - could often be wrong).

I never was extremely good at estimating my own traits and abilities. Being a by-polar (of a rather mild variety), I would go from feeling overly potent to misery and self-deprecation, and neither state produced good results. I’m much better now, and negative thinking (in my interpretation) has a lot to do with it.

American Idol provides perfect examples of people with overblown self-esteem. Sometimes the denial of ones own lack of musicality and inability to sing becomes a tragedy and I know  several instances of ruined, or almost ruined lives because of… yes, badly applied positive thinking!

Well, I’ve promised an introduction (of sorts) to The Power of Negative Thinking, but it looks like this post is getting way too long. So, I’ll wrap it up for today and ramble more about this subject in the next post.

After getting pretty much pissed off at all this avalanche of Positive Thinking teachings, I started to tell my friends that I intend to write a book, titled “The Power of Negative Thinking”. I never got to it (figures) and, anyway, I wasn’t really serious to start with. But thinking about this helped me to formulate some principles that helped me to get through life, at least when I was able to apply them.

And anticipating “successful outcome of every situation and action” or “good and favorable results” wasn’t helping much at all.

To be continued…

Another “non-musical” post, Just found this quote somewhere and was stricken by its actuality in our present economic situation.

President Andrew Jackson said nearly two centuries ago: “If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.”

I guess, people still don’t understand anything about our money and banking system. Or I just didn’t notice the revolution?

Just started working on my next blog post about jazz in Russia in 50’s.

Tough luck - came across another one of Leon Weinstein’s creations: “Lenin vs Obama/Conspiracy theory”. And, boy, is it a conspiracy theory!

This time I don’t want to quote the article in its entirety - it is long and most of it is irrelevant to its main message. If you want, you can google it, it was posted on Townhall.com.

The best part in Leon’s post is the very beginning. He is honest enough to say that he has “an absolutely unproven theory”.

Then he proceeds to tell the history of Russian revolution and Lenin’s role in it. As in all his writings, he gives quite a lot of correct historical facts (together with pretty questionable or just wrong interpretations of them).

The next “historic” section is covering Leon’s understanding of the development of political situation in America, starting at the time of JFK. To make it short, here are the highlights:

1. The Vietnam War was a just war and should have been fought until the “victory”, whatever it could have meant.
2. Massive protests against the war were caused by students being scared to go to war. They were “masquerading as political protests and civil disagreements.”
3. This is a quote: “For the first time in the history of the US, the liberal Left (known in Europe under names “Socialists” and “Communists”) began to resonate with the mood of the mainstream Americans. This was the start of the new coalition that almost destroyed America, as we know it, and still threatens to change it forever.”

And so it goes. There is no need to continue. For Leon anybody who is critical of anything he considers to be really American is automatically unpatriotic and hates America. In other words, dissent is bad.

Even more, for Weinstein, behind any dissent or even any idea he doesn’t agree with, there is a plot to destroy America, and, automatically, it is socialist/communist plot. And Obama, of course, is an equivalent of Lenin and plans a socialist revolution in America.

Here comes Senator Joseph McCarthy again. I’ve already written about Weinstein being possessed by the spirit of McCarthy here (go toward the end of the post).

Every terrifying  monster, tyrant, or just a dangerously crazy douche-bag in history always had some smaller, sometimes pathetic versions of themselves. Some of these offsprings were very dangerous:  Stalin -  Tito - Sadam Hussein, or Hitler - Mussolini - Franco, etc.

Joseph McCarthy himself was a weak derivative of the Great Inquisitors. He was, of course, just a very bad joke, but still did enormous amount of harm.

Leon Weinstein is a spiritual and ideological heir of McCarthy, we are lucky that he is just pathetic, no more!

The sad thing, he really has no clue how really unpatriotic he is!

Ambrose Bierce had people like Leon in mind when he wrote more than 100 years ago:

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

As democracy is perfected, the office [of the President] represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” (H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920)

We definitely managed to achieve this amazing result, predicted by Mencken almost a hundred years ago, by electing George W. Bush - and not once, but TWICE!

The following is also often sited as said by Mencken:

Nobody’s ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

He never wrote this anywhere, his closest comment on record was:

No one in this world… has ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. (Chicago Tribune, 1926)

So, Americans shouldn’t get pissed off at him, his observation was global.

Something somehow related: In Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., created a new religion, Bokononism. Here is the Fourteenth Book of Bokonon:

Title: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?

Only verse: Nothing. 

Positive thinking, anybody?

Five days a week at quarter to 10 am I  walk from my home near La Brea and Sunset to The Horn Connection shop where I work, At 4 pm I take the same walk in the other direction. It takes altogether about 12 minutes one way.

In my age I need a walk and in this sense it is a nice thing to do.  There is nothing really to look at on the way. One ugly building after another, sometimes they  demolish one ugly building to erect another even uglier in its place. I guess, it’s called progress.

Sunset is a major street, but, as almost everywhere in Los Angeles, there aren’t many people walking on it. Those that are really walking, not just going  from the shop to their car, are usually the most interesting to watch. This is Hollywood, the land of real characters.

There is at least one homeless person on the way each day, sometimes 2, 3 or more. I already know most of them and exchange hello’s with some, others are so far gone, they are way beyond any communication.

There is one man who is there almost every day, he looks happy, alway has a smile on his face. For some reason looking at him  always makes me sad.

He is a veteran and a patriot. His posessions are loaded on a  cart that is draped in American flag. Another flag on a pole is attached to his cart. In his hand he holds a large plastic cup with stars and stripes on it. He has his veteran’s ID hanging on a string around his neck. He makes sure  that everybody sees it, but never asks for money.

He now recognizes me, his smile is getting larger, he seems to be glad to see me, although it isn’t often that I have a dollar or some change in my pocket to give him. Sometimes he says “God bless America” with the enthusiasm that would work great on the election campaign.

Isn’ it a positive thinking at its best? Do you think this guy has a vision of bright future? Or he just lost all hope and feels good about it?

Yes, he is a true patriot. His country sent him to war to fight for whatever. May be he thought he new what he was fighting for, may be he didn’t have any idea. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The country accepted his sacrifice and  in return completely forgot about him and let him live on the street. And he still says loudly: “God bless America” for all us to hear.

I do admire him  in some ways, I wouldn’t be able to be  so… forgiving?  Wrong word - he probably doesn’t even think there is anything to forgive. Seemingly, there is no resentment at all , no hard feelings and probably that’s what makes him happy and content.

I don’t know about you, but it makes me angry and sad…

I already posted a story about my allergy to ads.

Now, there is another TV ad that deserves your attention. It promotes a pill to help in quitting smoking. May be you’ve seen it - there is a hare and a turtle on the road - probably referring to Zenon’s paradox, but mostly to stress that quitting smoking is a difficult and lengthy process, so the use of this pill would appear almost inevitable.

Now, what about the side effects? I couldn’t believe my years: you could experience suicidal thoughts.

No, I’m not joking, the ad says: “If you experience suicidal thoughts, call your doctor”

I used to smoke non-stop, about 3 packs a day. I quit about 18 years ago, without pills, gum, hypnosis, absolutely on my own. True, it wasn’t easy and required a lot of inner work and some methods I learned in a 12 step program (not for smokers). I experienced a lot of very unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, even was depressed for a while. Adding to that a pill that could cause suicidal thoughts - no, thank you!

If you watch TV, you would eventually see this ad. If you are a smoker and are planning to quit, you might wish to write your suicidal note before taking this pill.

Almost all last week I was conducting an absolutely unscientific poll in person and by telephone.

The question was “What is your estimate of the percentage of conservative republicans among - [the name of the group the polled belongs]

There were two groups asked:

1. Jazz musicians
2. Russian immigrants of the last wave (1970 - to now)

The results of this so called “poll” (absolutely unscientific, but still very revealing):

The percentage of conservative republicans:

1. Among Jazz musicians - about 10%
2. Among Russian Americans - about 90%

I find it very interesting and very significant. I have my own ideas why it is so, but I really would like to hear from others.

Please leave a comment!

This is a sequel (kind of) to The Great Jazz Seduction post.

I’ve bought my first tenor saxophone in the spring of 1955. I didn’t know that at the time, but it turned out to be a decent horn, made by Kohlert in the 30’s. At the time it was a German company, and it still exists, but somewhere in the far East - Taiwan or Thailand, I don’t know for sure. The old man that sold it to me gave me some instructions on how to hold it and which end goes into the mouth. There was an ancient chirped mouthpiece and a few half-rotten reeds. I was ready to start.

It was next to impossible to find anybody to give me lessons or even just an advice. As I already mentioned before, from 1947 on, Stalin and the Communist Party declared a war on all so called “bourgeous capitalist” influences in art, literature and music, and jazz and the saxophone became almost officially the enemies of Soviet state.

Stalin died in 1953, and that saved a lot of people and arts from complete destruction. Very slowly, but steadily, the atmosphere started to change and jazz music and its fans started to crawl out of their hiding places. Some bands playing in the restaurants and at the dance parties started to play something vaguely resembling jazz and use saxophones. But the only thing I could learn from these saxophone players was how not to play!

So. in the beginning my lessons came from the radio and a few records I could get hold of. For the three months summer vacation I went to my parents’ “dacha” (summer house) and spent all these three months practicing 6-8 hours a day. Just imagine how happy it made my neighbours!

No matter how much the neighbours wanted to stop me, they didn’t succeed, and in September I returned to Moscow full of unjustified confidence in my playing abilities. I managed to get into a semi-amateur big band at the Moscow Arts Workers Club. This band was a part of a large variety concert program “The First Step”, that really deserves a separate piece because of its enormous influence on the development of stand-up comedy, pop music and even jazz in Moscow. I will definitely return to this topic later.

Now I started to discover that there were other serious young jazz musicians in Moscow. Almost all of them were like me, college and University students, majoring in areas very far from music, united by their addiction to jazz.

Once more, I couldn’t even imagine then that I’ll eventually become a professional musician. I was working on developing my skills just for the fun of it. But at that time there were two problems in my life that I intended to solve, using my newly acquired pretty limited musical skills, namely:

1. I really needed to make extra money.
2. I was a shy and reserved person, lacking any confidence with dealing with chicks. They just felt my inner discomfort and preferred to deal with somebody else.

So I intended to use my saxophone to change my financial situation and attract some girls. To some extent, it worked, mostly in solving the first problem - money.

There was a growing demand for the dance bands for all kinds of dance parties, mostly in colleges, university and science research institutes. It worked practically the same way as so called “casuals” are organized here in the States. There was a contractor who’d secure the gig and then put together a small band. And although I wasn’t really accomplished player back then, there wasn’t really anybody else, and I suddenly became the most popular tenor player in Moscow and started playing gigs non-stop, 5-6 times a week.

But, if the money problem was more or less taken care off, the situation with girls didn’t improve much at all. What really helped, at least for some time, was booze!

It made me stronger, assertive, confident, more attractive to the girls, it seemed to me that I even played better, which, to some extent, could even have been true. The problem was - it only worked if I was able to control the amount consumed and stop on time. And I was notoriously bad at it!

Russians are deservingly known as some of the hardest drinkers in the world. Russian jazz musicians always were eager to be very patriotic about that and prove themselves to be “more Russians than Russians” in that respect. As the Russian saying goes: “You have a drink and become a completely different person, but.. this other person wants to have a drink too!”

Never liking the person you are at the moment is definitely a contributing factor to the development of drug and alcohol addictions, in jazz musicians in particular. You try to reach that wonderful state of perfect balance of feeling great about yourself, being in full control of your music, with that nasty self-deprecating voice suppressed, when everything flows naturally and the joy of creating overwhelms you…

Some lucky musicians achieve this state naturally, some get there by hard work on themselves, and some get there with the help of drugs or alcohol. For the latter this state becomes more and more elusive and rare, they have to use and drink more and more, and…

OK, that is a topic for a separate post and I promise to get back to it. I don’t drink or use for a long time, close to 25 years, and I’m lucky I’m alive now. In the art of drinking myself almost to death I am definitely a retired professional and, hopefully, my story could help others.

By 1956 eight musicians formed a more or less permanent group and called it, very inventively, “The Eight”. It featured a trumpet (Victor Zelchenko), trombone (Konstantin Bakholdin), two altos (George Garanian and Eric Dibay), one tenor sax (me) and bass (Igor Berukshtis), drums(Alexander Garetkin or Alexander Salganik) and piano (Boris Rytchkov or Nikolai Kapustin). It was the first group in Moscow that played written arrangements. It soon became the most sought for group and was so busy, that it had sometimes to split to send two-three guys to the next gig, while the others were finishing the first one.

The picture below is the only one I have saved from this time - sorry for the quality.

 

I’m in front at right, playing my Kohlert sax with Brilhart mouthpiece.

This group played everything from pop tunes to dixieland to swing (Glenn Miller was essential), even some bebop - and the crowd was happily dancing and applauding after every tune.

The Soviet society was slowly opening to western influences and the power was reluctantly going along. There was a decision made to have an International Youth Festival in Moscow in the summer of 1957. The Soviets intended to promote the successes of the Soviet Union to the guests from abroad, but there was an unintentional result - promotion of the western culture to eager to absorb it Moscovites.

And Moscow jazz musicians became some of the main beneficiaries.

More next time!

Part 1 Part 2

Part 3 is an attempt at anti-utopia: what, Leon imagines, would happen if you vote for Democrats - a very old tactics of fear-mongering.

I truly believe that even McCain, is he reads this (I believe he won’t), might just have a heart attack from laughing. Leon, please have mercy for the old man! I’m not voting for John McCain, but I believe he is an intelligent and knowledgeable man. He doesn’t deserve this crap.

But then the unexpected will begins to happen. The Users didn’t not know that when you take most of the profits from Producers, when you tax their inheritance and their dividends, their capital gains, their large homes and generally punish them for their success, the Producers stop creating new jobs, stop inventing new technologies, stop investing in new bold projects and stop working hard - or in simple words they stop producing wealth that the life of this country depends on, and which all of us enjoy so much.

Until now we have seen exactly the opposite happening. The moment the government started working for “Producers” (read: top earners, corporations, financial sector) instead or representing all American people, there was a steady growing gap between the earnings of the top 1% and middle class, and now the situation is close to that in the 3rd world countries. More people are dropping below official poverty level (now over 30 million total). poverty rate in USA is now higher than in at least 10 developed countries.. The number of people without health insurance is steadily rising. Deregulation of financial services lead to a scary growth of the number of bankruptcies and to recent mortgage crisis. And the top 1% is getting filthy richer!

And that’s what Leon would like to continue, just on even larger scale!

Here he goes again:

The Producers now are not in charge of their money, property and destiny (all that now can be taken away from them by a decision of the democratically elected officials, the majority of whom were representing Users, not Producers), they first slow and then eventually stop producing. To whose benefit should they work so hard? To whose benefits they shall create new companies, invest time and money, risk everything they have in life? To fill someone else’s pockets? Like in countless countries and regimes of the past, the moment people can’t get benefits from their own labor, ingenuity and investments, the economy freezes.

And the society that was proud to call itself a free Capitalistic society would cease to exist. The tyranny of one person of the past would be substituted by the tyranny of a majority, in this case the majority of Users. Freedom would be abolished in order to cater to the needs of the Users. The will of the State once again becoming more important than the life of the individual. And the wealth would begin to diminish. Exactly like it did in all the countries that put great ideas of equality ahead of the freedom of an individual and forgot about one simple thing, the nature of the human being.

Under this new (old) system the owners of the rental houses will stop repairing their properties. They would be unable to justify the expenses. New houses would not be built since prices and profits would be controlled by the state and it wouldn’t be worth investing. New drugs will not be created - the pharmaceutical companies will not be able to cash in on new inventions that usually cost millions to create, test, promote and distribute. Under this system the quality of the health care goes down since doctors receive their pay anyway, regardless of the quality of their service. Universities loose researchers - they are able to get better pay abroad. Research in many companies’ die, since only the companies with an abundance of profits can afford research. The Market eventually crashes (not fluctuates, crashes). Many large companies slid into bankruptcy. And slowly but surely life in the US will begin to resemble life in Mexico, Cuba, North Vietnam and Belarus. Immigration into America stops and the animosity and hate some other countries feel toward the United States diminishes and disappears. And China proudly and rightly will begin to be called the most advanced nation on earth. And only in the history books may be written about this ‘once rich and great country’.

Is there any sense to comment on all this? I’m not a Democrat, but to present this as their platform is either stupid or just plain dishonest. Again, the goal is to induce fear.

An obvious fault with Leon’s reasoning is that there are only two options for him. He wants a pure “laissez-faire” capitalism. At the same time he praises the 200 years of the United States achievements, although there never was any time in American history when pure ‘laissez-faire” capitalism existed. The government since Washington was controlling slavery, tariffs, intervened in monetary policy, founded government banks, created what we now call “corporate welfare”. Later came control over monopolies, anti-trust laws under Teddy Roosevelt, who firmly believed in Government protection for the citizens from the excesses of unregulated capitalism. Social security and other government programs, paid by the taxes, followed under another Roosevelt. So, The States always had and has now what economists call “mixed capitalism”, which greatly added to the success of this society.

Actually Leon’s views are very similar to Herbert Spencer, the creator of the idea of the “survival of the fittest”, later developed into “Social Darwinism” (that, in reality, has no relation to Darwin’s theories).

Spencer believed that unsuccessful people that aren’t able to support themselves should be left without any help - left to die, so the society would get better without them. And if you think that Leon’s views are more humane, think again. All he wrote in this letter tells you that his dream is to get rid of all those “users” altogether. It is very close to class genocide, not by killing, but by just letting them die.

Now comes his desperate call, and although he addresses it to “Dear Senator”, he is definitely smarter than to expect to influence McCain by this outpouring of paranoia, fear of “communist” conspiracy and predictions of apocalypse coming. No, he is addressing it to those who listen to Fox news, Rush Limbaugh and such, he is “preaching to the Choir”, just being afraid that they somehow get a portion of truth and reason and then may vote for Democrats because of that.

Dear Senator, this is what will happened (is already happening) if you do not win this election. I want you to realize that you are not fighting for yourself, but also for all of us, for all the people who cherish freedom and the right of the Individual to pursue happiness the way he wants to pursue it. You once said you would prefer to loose the election, but not loose the war. It was nice to hear, but again it was about you, your election. I want you to realize that now the situation is very different. Now you can’t loose this election. You have no right to the loose it! There is no retreat! There is no compromise! This is our last stand before this gloomy scenario will start unfolding in front of our eyes! The socialism is already playing out in the speeches of Senator Obama, in the ads of moveon.org, in articles by Democratic Party officials, under standing ovations of the tens of thousands of hypnotized listeners. Democratic party that once proudly represented Producers has chosen to represent the Users. This is the class warfare predicted by Lenin, Mao and Marx (an apparent hero of the Far L eft of the United States Democratic Party), and We the Producers have no right to loose it.

The dark shadow of Joseph McCarthy is definitely here. Oh, I’m sorry, it isn’t like a shadow, it is like McCarthy’s soul is now inhabiting Weinstein’s brain. And I’m afraid that the same kind of clinical paranoia that drove McCarthy to ruin the lives of thousands of people that had nothing to do with communism or marxism, is now driving Leon Weinstein.

McCarthyism, didn’t, of course, reach the scope of political prosecutions in dictatorship states (communist or otherwise). American system stopped him eventually, a little late for many affected. But it is important to keep in mind that the main idea was absolutely the same - punishing people for their views.

McCarthy paranoia was amplified by his alcoholism that ruined his liver and caused his death at 49.

Now we have another paranoiac who sees communism and socialism where it doesn’t exist. We all should be grateful that he doesn’t have the power McCarthy had, but, obviously would like to have.

To wrap it all up I would like to paraphrase Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch’s words, addressed to Senator McCarty in 1950 hearing.

Have you left no sense of decency, Leon Weinstein?

Part 1 Part 2