We’ve come a long way since 1967. A lot of that distance must have been in a reverse gear where music is concerned. Take a look at the top 100 hits from that year. People who were born 20 later can name some of them in 2 or 3 bars—and they still play in bars. Most of the top 100 from 2020, on the other hand, could serve as cruel and unusual penance for mortal sins. Whatever kinds of guilt trips the woker-than-thous try to heap on the boomers—their revolution had a hundred catchy theme songs—53 years down the road the upheaval going on now will be hard on ears going by its tunes. What the history industry will make out of the rest of it—if enlightenment still prevails—is ugly to consider.

It’s not just the music that gives you the creeps in the throes of this uprising. It’s mob rhetoric–livid and tired simultaneously–that never knows where to stop.

Particular demands concerning law enforcement excesses can be perfectly reasonable. Does it really make sense, for example, that policemen accused of serious crimes are prosecuted by the same district attorneys offices they work closely with? Even not so skeptical observers tend to question the spotty record of charges and convictions this arrangement turns out. Does Mayberry really need a tank? Is rampant no-knock actually necessary? When activists stick to questions like this they are on solid ground. Although, when it comes to public employees like cops, enlightened enthusiasm for their unions can’t be glossed over. A People’s Trage... Figes, Orlando Best Price: $14.20 Buy New $22.38 (as of 04:38 UTC - Details)

Activism works best when the focus is narrow and demands are few. Its when you seriously suggest tearing down a society that’s kept roofs overhead, food on tables, water running, toilets flushing, idiocy on the box and AC in the ductwork for hundreds of millions of people over several generations –that our wannabe consciences with molotovs go beyond ridiculous and get scary.

Any social reformer who stands at the drawing board ought to have some idea what has already been on it and why it has been erased. People who write books before reading any used to have a hard time making it to print. That was before literary standards became oppressive.

On August 25th–in the very thick of things—Vicky Osterweil’s screed In Defense of Looting came out. At a time when authors with manuscripts in proofs get canceled for trifles—the public is informed in hardcover that crash, burn and grab of private property is the path to our salvation. Our betters, at NPR and the Nation, aren’t aware that it’s not exactly the most novel or worldly philanthropic theory around. The idea of finite resources never occurs to them–was it growing up in the US that left them with that impression?.

Where does this author think new supplies will be coming from once the businesses that provided them have been sacked?

Osterweil seems to believe brimming stockpiles of food, medicine and toilet paper show up inexplicably from horns of plenty in the hinterlands. The idea that the stuff has to be grown, manufactured, packaged, organized and shipped by people exerting effort is outside her bailiwick. That it doesn’t reach consumers until ordered from suppliers by merchants with funds to meet their cost is so much triviata. “Insurance covers it” isn’t supposed to be a punchline–it’s something we hear from blithering wokesters who have actually been elected to office. All a conscientious rioter has to do is wait for the next truck. Looting straight off the trailer does save shelf-stocking wages. Drivers, another apparently unlimited commodity, get treated to a good social justice pummeling for showing up.

Plywood will soon enwrap the market now in cinders. After that, altruistic antifans will just have to enjoy their Chronic and Kind bud without the craft beer and soyburgers. That’s okay, isn’t it alt-rightly fascist to think that far ahead? If our loot-loopy reformer thinks the underprivileged are wanting for chow and necessities now give those peacefully protested downtowns another few weeks. Antifa–unlike the locals–can easily move to happier hunting grounds. Deep thinkers like Osterweil can’t get caught up in the dull details of organizing farm to table distribution. Neither could Marie Antionette. A People’s Trage... Figes, Orlando Best Price: $25.38 Buy New $19.03 (as of 04:38 UTC - Details)

Have we seen any of this before?

Lenin: Loot the Looters

Vladimir Lenin, Advice to Workers and Peasants. 1917

Original Source: Pravda, No. 18, 6 February 1918, p. 3.

“You … have before you the very difficult and noble task … of organizing the new economic order in the provinces and of establishing on a firm foundatioLn the power of the Soviets. In doing this you will be helped … by all workers and peasants … who are coming more and more to see that apart from the Soviet Government there is no escape from famine and death …

The bourgeoisie … and the saboteurs are … conspiring against us. They know that they will be completely ruined … if the people succeed in dividing the national wealth which is now in the exclusive possession of the rich …

That is where your function begins. You must organize and consolidate the Soviet power in the villages. You will encounter there the village-bourgeoisie–the kulaks-who will hinder your work in every way. But to fight them will be an easy matter. The masses will be with you …

Make it clear to the peasant that the kulaks and the bloodsuckers must be expropriated in order to bring about a just and equitable distribution of goods … The bourgeoisie are concealing in their coffers the riches which they have plundered, and are saying, “We shall sit tight for a while.” We must catch the plunderers and compel them to return the spoils.

Your chief business will be this: do not let the brigands get away with their riches, otherwise we shall perish … Whisperers: Private Li... Figes, Orlando Best Price: $12.91 Buy New $27.23 (as of 04:38 UTC - Details)

That Bolshevik was right who in reply to a question whether or not it was true that the Bolsheviks are looters, said, “Yes, we loot the looters.'”

No preacher in the most fervid revival tent of the bible-belt ever delivered a sermon that was as faithfully embraced by his congregation. So, how did this work out for those masses after The October Revolution? Early on it was riotous fun—for drunken bands of young men who placed low value on human life and women’s rights to their own bodies. Assault, rape and murder were commonplace for five years once Lenin and co. took over.

The mansions of the old regime were well stocked with wine cellars, art, furniture and accommodation. Roving bands doled out social justice with a vengeance. Soon stately homes, as well as humble abodes, were barren shells littered with feces and often corpses. The accumulated treasures of family caretakers fell prey to the mob. Meanwhile, mass murder never seen in the worst days of Ivan the Terrible began a 35 year run. They broke millions of dozens of eggs and never got their omelet.

In the meantime less people were farming or giving any thought to the future. They had the party to do that. But Bolshevik leadership was too busy re-educating, torturing and liquidating the people that used to keep the larders stocked. A natural famine didn’t help.

Deprivation, on a scale unknown under the Romanovs, wasn’t far off. Nobody was missing meals at the Kremlin while the borscht-belters were tightening down to their spines. All over the Union comrades were the only protein source left. A hungry citizen in a workers paradise can develop a taste for exotic cuisine in a jiffy. https://airmail.news/issues/2019-11-2/how-to-serve-man.

Children began disappearing and some adults were momentarily sated. A nice leg of cossack, a loin of little boy or trunk of tovarich might be available–if you could afford them. The rich tended to stay buried and undigested–since they were massacred far too early to remain fit fare for the stewpot. Nope, it was Karl’s precious prole that got the meat hook and made up a commie cutlet. For the ordinary palate–excepting gourmands like Hannibal Lecter and Jeffrey Dahmer–it wasn’t a culinary era evoking much nostalgia. The Less You Know, the... Satter, David Best Price: $5.00 Buy New $9.11 (as of 04:38 UTC - Details)

“That oughta’ learn ya” Granny would say–but it didn’t for long. Man made and man exaggerated famines were a Soviet specialty. They were at it again in Ukraine in the 1930s. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/i-have-eaten-my-children-talk-too-much-ill-eat-you-too-an-excerpt-from-anne-applebaums-red-famine

So-called idealistic Americans–not unlike Natalie Escobar who amicably interviewed Osterweil for NPR or R.H. Lossin who reviewed In Defense of Looting favorably for The Nation–were trekking to the Soviet Union just as the second wave of mass cannibalism was cooking there. Only the truest believer can keep the faith of a cult going through this ordeal twice in less than 15 years. We don’t know what happened to many US emigres…or if they served the cause on a plate with beets and cabbage?

This country is far from perfect but the idea it couldn’t be far worse is ungratefully short-sighted. Lossin tells us:

“It is a testament to the real power of actual mass movements that the media establishment has felt compelled to cover illegal, expensive, and destructive protests with such care.”

“[C]are” is it? And those gushing this commodity are in the “media establishment” no less? Alternative sources of information have been on the matter of police excesses with steady frequency for more than 20 years. Sites like PINAC, Reason, The Rutherford Institute, The Free Thought Project, Lew Rockwell, mises.org, The Cato Institute and others have poured coverage on the problem since Clinton. They never take issues like the proliferation of SWAT, the 1033 program, SCOTUS 4th amendment construction and “qualified immunity” off the table. How often are any of those words featured on front pages or said aloud in broadcast media? Despite the the steady consistency of relevant stats, media treated this matter as anomalic distraction until very recently.

Alex Jones, of all people, got its launch from the Waco incident which had no shortage of “POC” victims. Whatever its faults Infowars had a section called “Police State” for many years. The unequivocal fact is–that rather than caring–the media is exploiting the present unrest.

The last five paragraphs of Lossin’s piece are devoted to blaming it all on the free market–literally from Apple to Mom and Pop–but it’s the media establishment plucking heart-strings ever so tenderly. Setting up shop in the hood is a crime against humanity. Almost makes you want to toss a brick and mete out a pounding–if you can find a suitably vulnerable “fascist”–yourself.

Destruction can only end up equalling less all around. Government organization of meal tickets, housing and general needs is guaranteed NOT to be an improvement. It won’t be the rich who get squeezed. Once WWII ended regular meals, decent housing and reliable infrastructure were a long time coming back in Northern Europe from the English Channel to the Ural mountains. But it was only the Soviet’s subjects that experienced a third incidence of starvation so severe that long pork was on the menu again from 1945 through 46.

Just before the country sunk whole hog into the cultural sty of the disco era the theme song for the film “Mahogany,” briefly hit number one. Diana Ross purrs the haunting lyrics “Do you know where you’re going to” leaving an indelible pang in any sensate brain. If you were asking the country as a whole in 1975—forty-seven years later the answer is an emphatic NO. We have plenty to work with and can change course as long as we don’t destroy it. Those who claim to care so much more than Joe Six-Pack insist it is unconscionable to leave vital infrastructure intact. When the destruction of a productive prosperous class is necessary to raise the dignity and living standards of another the end sum is always the same.  More want, more suffering and more serfs. Driving the yeomen down to size will further ennoble a fraction of the 1%…the rest will have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

As melodious years go 1968 beat 1967. The Beatles put their word out on insurrection in August–the chorus is unduly optimistic–otherwise it could really stand some play about now:

Aaahhh!
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out?
Don’t you know it’s gonna be
All right
All right
All right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is, brother, you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be
All right
All right
All right

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You’d better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be
All right
All right
All right

All right, all right, all right
All right, all right, all right
All right, all right

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