Fear Factor.

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

This shit again?

Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

Seriously. You can look this up, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rapid collapse of Communist regimes all throughout Eastern Europe from November and December of 1989 all the way to the fall of the Albanian bunker-state in the summer of 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself over the remainder of that year until the Hammer and Sickle was finally hauled down from the Kremlin itself on Christmas Day of that same year, and even the institution of multiparty elections in Mongolia the year after.

I'm serious, Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989, although I'll take 1991 as an acceptable answer if you must be pedantic about it. Hell, even the Chinese, Cubans and Vietnamese aren't really Communists anymore and the North Koreans have effectively abandoned Communism in favor of a cult proclaiming the Kim family as gods.

Joe Rogan is several years older than me. He lived through all the same shit and was old enough to have a more adult perspective. Hell, he's rich, he knows how Capitalistic the United States of America is and he knows there's not a chance in hell that actual Communism would get anywhere in this country.

Hell, ten or fifteen years ago he'd have made fun of this bogus red-baiting bullshit. Now he's doing it, because he has a bunch of new followers that believe this garbage.

Hell, the last time Communism wielded significant power in America was in the 1930's during the Depression. That was largely undone by the Communists themselves right before World War II when Moscow abandoned improved race relations as a plank in the Party's platform in favor of the ultimately doomed Soviet alliance with Nazi Germany, and a majority of American communists left the Party over that. 

By the time of the Red Scare in the 1950's the power of American communism had all but vanished, which thus made it a convenient target for Joe McCarthy's demagoguery. It's a lot easier to kick somebody when they aren't just down...but completely lacking in the power to kick back.

And that was all Tailgunner Joe ever was, a goddamned bully who was ultimately undone by his own excesses and the fact that the whole damn country was watching the Army-McCarthy hearings on television. Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Though there were threads of Communist and far-Left influence in the counterculture of the 1960's and early 1970's they didn't really go much further than the pop-culture veneration of Che Guevara and Jane Fonda's ill-advised trip to Hanoi...and if you're still mad about either and younger than 72 years old or still mad about it almost 50 years after the fact, get the fuck over it. It's 2021, it's not 1968 or 1972 anymore and you'd best accept that concept and move on.

I mean for fuck's sake it's not even 1989 anymore, and that's a good thing in a lot more ways than it isn't.

In point of fact one hell of a lot of those Baby Boomer would-be Revolutionaries grew up to be Yuppie Republicans and Trump-Supporting senior citizens. That's one of the reasons it's fashionable for old Republicans to say "I used to be a Leftist." No, you weren't, you were just trying to piss off your parents and now that you're old, you've deliberately turned yourself into an over-the-top caricature of the same shit you accused them of being.

Because it never was about counter-culture or equality or making a better world for everybody. It was ever and always all about you and your desire to think you're special.

And nowadays now that a lot of these dudes are old and their dicks have stopped working, they seek to recapture the glory of their lost youth by shouting "Better Dead Than Red!" again. But not at the Soviets, at their fellow Americans (Most of whom are the furthest possible thing from Soviet Communists.)

In point of fact, since 2000 and that famous electoral map, Red has become the color of Republicanism, proudly and with no sense of irony or self-awareness whatever.

Hell, the Russians...led by actual KGB agent and unrepentant "former" Communist Vladimir Putin, are happily bankrolling this shit and egging it on and laughing all the way to whatever department of strategic war plans they're planning their operations in for when they get American idiots to break off a piece or two of America.

And when that happens, guess who's going to swoop in and offer generous terms on this, that and the other thing while also offering to defend the Anti-vaxxers, fascist wannabes and two thirds of Southern Republicans in their shiny new attempt at Confederacy 2.0?

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The Russians, you bet.

And trust me, plenty of Russians resent the fuck out of the fact that Communism (and the empire that went with it) hasn't been a think since 1989. Those people want their revenge.

You know what the first thing the Russians are going to do is? That is AFTER they come in as allies, offering cheerfully to shore up a shaky regime, then suborn whatever military and police these people have, gain control of broadcast media and obtain lists of all the people who own firearms?

(And do all of this having secured the cooperation of the local regime in advance!)

They're going to round up the influencers, intellectuals, political elites, religious leaders and wealthy oligarchs, shoot many of them and ship the rest off to life at hard labor in a Gulag camp of the strictest regime. And likely (as they already have) taking steps to gain (more) control over those who live in areas that they do not yet control, all in the hope of expanding their new space.

And whoever these people's leader is will die when a battalion of their bodyguards loses a hellacious gunfight with SPETSNAZ troops who'll likely be in US or NATO or neo-Confederate uniform themselves...  

This isn't supposition here, this is just an adaptation of the exact same battle plan the Soviet Union used in Afghanistan in late December of 1979.

And the Russians will use it because, for awhile at least, it worked...and it had worked before, too.

Imagine that these fuckers break off some piece of America, part of the South and maybe a little of the Midwest, too, then wall it off from the rest of the country and fight the rest of us to a bloody draw as they turn the "Culture Wars" from cold to hot. It's a bloody, sharp insurgent conflict. US military casualties are quite low, but civilian casualties are murderous and the enemy conducts a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing, inundating the rest of the US in refugees before the ski-masked, AR-15 wielding, Confederate-flag bearing rebels are cut down mercilessly by the Army National Guard, supported by active US Army troops and Marines.

But the bad guys have secured no-shit international recognition, from Belarus, Russia, Saudi Arabia and a few other places. The United Nations grudgingly accepts this. A few months later Russian troops crash into Belarus with little resistance, but at the same time several smaller Central Asian republics flip to recognizing the new state.

The long-term calculations favor the rest of us, and seeing the stakes, most of our allies and even the Chinese join the conflict on our side. but rather than risk a wider conflict and up against a lack of will to fight on the part of many Americans, the two sides work out a ceasefire. 

The United States, though diminished, still exists at say, a 75% level, we're still the "superpower" but we've taken a hit. The EU and NATO, not to mention the Chinese, are having to take up some of our previous international taskings and the power of our country is diminished accordingly, with much suffering resulting.

Remaining conservatives like Adam Kinzinger, Joe Walsh, Liz Cheney and Rick Wilson bemoan the fact that the only way we retain much of our power is even greater and more open integration with the rest of the world...including people we'd never have been that way with before.

It works, for now. As some of them note "For now" might be all we need. We just have to take the risks and go in after the bastards. Hell, we will eventually have to just because of human rights violations.

Our side ends up with Medicare For All, their side ends up with Healthcare For Nobody, except for the very rich. (And too many "Progressives" are Okay with this.)

See, the thing is, the Right can't even keep its shit together on the most basic level, what it controls very quickly turns into a baroque Absurdistan, built over a disease-ridden, poverty-stricken Banana Republic that's governed more by conspiracy theory than fact. The rebel armed forces is routinely crippled by COVID-19 outbreaks, not to mention other diseases. Polio makes a shocking comeback, and there are ugly rumors about Smallpox.

(US military planners thus simply bide their time.)

But the people who still live there, not to mention those who rushed to join it, still say "It's better here."

On the other side of the line, there are vaccination campaigns to prevent outbreaks of diseases once thought eradicated.

Everybody thinks it won't last, some people take action based on that. To make sure it does, though.

I want you to imagine for a minute, FOX News or OANN or Newsmax broadcasting live video of Russian IL-76 Candid transport planes landing unopposed at Austin or Birmingham or Charleston, disgorging hundreds of hard-eyed Russian paratroopers and some rat-faced dudes in suits. The next wave unloads scores of helicopter gunships. Local politicians, and perhaps even honor guards of gray-uniformed troops and a military band that plays first the Russian national anthem then "Dixie" and those local politicians wax poetic about a new era of cooperation between themselves and the Russian empire, until they are led away for "Political consultations" (Note: They will never be seen again.)

Those who remember the Fall Of Saigon, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Afghanistan in 1979, or Grenada, note that the Russians conduct is strikingly "Soviet."

While other Americans on the other side of the lines (and likely in certain besieged cities and military bases that did not go over to the enemy as well) react with anger and shock, While the US military in general and Air National Guard air defense radar controllers in particular look on in mute, incandescent rage at what's on TV and immediately the fact that suddenly dozens more aircraft appear on radar screens in the designated air corridors...these escorted by swarms of jet fighters with a few tactical bombers maintaining a menacing overwatch offshore.

It's quickly discussed, whether or not to engage (and certainly anybody with a brain in their head knows it's going to come to that eventually) but based on the terms of the recent cease-fire (and various political calculations) a decision is made to keep most of the Air Force (and Marine and Naval Aviation) on ground alert and stand up to DEFCON 3, and to deploy Army units in the field again, and along the new inner-American borders, but not to attack lest we be accused of reigniting hostilities ourselves. 

A number of besieged bases in hostile territory are evacuated by clouds of gray-green C-17A Globemaster III's and much equipment is destroyed and left behind.

On FOX News, there are some new "guests" and Tucker Carlson looks rather nervous, sweating his way through his usual evening of smarmy bullshit, and in the senior leadership of the company there is some sudden, unexplained turnover and disappearances even in US-controlled territory.

The internet is abuzz not only with "Conservatives" in general and MAGA in particular celebrating that their liberation is at hand (again?) but with liberals pessimistically accepting that hostilities will likely be restarted soon (Because what else can we do?) and some ugly rumors of a huge battle in Austin or Mobile or wherever the Neo-confederacy has its capital...

Mysteriously, the next day it's announced that the enemy's leader has resigned, though he seems suspiciously absent when he never has been before.

And those who orchestrated all this, Russian oligarchs and KGB agents who miss the power and use the methods of the old Soviet Union drink toasts to the American media people and politicians that they duped into helping to start reestablishing its empire with a bunch of fakery about its dead ideology.

People who, one way or another, they will never see again.

And they laugh when some dude-bro FOX News guest asks on camera "Hey, whatever happened to Joe Rogan?"

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Be careful what you wish for, for you may get it, people.

But you won't get it on your terms, nor any that you "Like."

And when you do...well by then the deceivers will have enough power that they can walk openly and you cannot.

Your fellow Americans are not Communists, and not the enemy. But one hell of a lot of you all have gleefully hopped in bed with those who were once explicitly both, and remain so more covertly, in desire and method if not the exact ideology.

And the problem is, too many people know this shit, but are OK with it because they think they'll get something.

Other than dead, I mean.

Like I keep saying, we've got to stop this bullshit and we've got to do it while we still are one country.

Because trust me, those of us who want us not to be? They definitely have a plan.

And it doesn't benefit you.

The only way to stop it is to stop being afraid.