Gorbachev and Changes in East Bloc

Funny how some myths never die, like, “strong coffee sobers up a drunk,” or the whole astrology shtick . More dangerous myths making the media circuit are “communism is crumbling,” and “we’re seeing the demise of socialism.”

According to this trendy talk, you’d think some noble economic experiment had been tried the last 70 years and, found wanting, is voluntarily dismantling itself! Communism crumbling? Where? What Soviet Bloc country has allowed its subjects to own firearms? Which brutal dictator is not being replaced by a younger replica?

The absurdity that communism will ever agree to lay down and die is suicidal. For the Russian bear is showing to all the world how adaptable and shrewd it is in capitalizing on Western ignorance. To wit: As a result of the recent Gorbachev/Lech Walesa PR campaign, our Congress plans to shovel billions of tax dollars into their hands. Why? To prop up failing, inflexible, authoritarian socialism!

The fact remains, communism/socialism is no ideology at all but raw power masked as an economic system. The thugs who hold a billion-plus slaves in abject misery and terrorism could care less about dialectical materialism or the withering away of the state.

The so-called “demise of socialism” is one of those pitiable myths spewed out by editorialists who should know better, but who have sponsors to satisfy. Else, why would they ignore history, that whenever Soviet-style communism can’t feed its people, it always institutes crafty little programs to bleed credits, grain, technology and moral legitimacy from the West? Examples are rife: lend-lease, the Marshall Plan, detente, glasnost .

It is safe to say that without our aid and trade communism long ago would have self-destructed. Yet today it prospers exactly because, as a system designed to enslave people--not produce toasters and cabbage--it is only capable of bullying Bush, et al., into forking over vast sums of American wealth. Communism crumbling? Not as long as the media perpetuate this die-hard myth.

PETER J. O’MALLEY

Mission Viejo