Obama the Pitchfork Operator: Remake of the Soviet Classic


![]() | As seen on Pajamas Media (out of karakter) While some of today's comparisons between Obama and communist dictators may go over the top, the general direction of such thinking is not without merit: since they share a utopian goal of forced equality, it's logical to expect that their methods may also converge at some point. To wit, recent actions from Obama reminded me of a ploy Stalin used on Western entrepreneurs, which in itself is an illustrative morality play contrasting the differences between socialism and capitalism. "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks," Barack Obama told the CEOs of the world's most powerful financial institutions on March 27, when they cited competition for talent in an international market as justification for paying higher salaries to their employees. |
Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room, the bankers struggled to make themselves clear to the president, but he wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He interrupted them by saying, "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that." Accordingly, the words "public" and "the people" denote "an appearance of broad popular movement created by a small but highly organized band of professional pitchfork operators (ACORN) who rely on the government funding and the media's eagerness to present their deliberately planned actions and pre-fabricated messages as heartfelt and spontaneous." In a balanced society, an angry mob is never a part of the equation. But if the goal is to throw a capitalist society off balance in order to change it, an angry mob is the ticket. Anger is known to be the easiest and the most effective tool of crowd manipulation. Angry mobs cancel out the rule of law. Infusing anger into a community and turning it into an angry mob, canceling out the rule of law, and changing the balance in a society - this is what community organizers do for a living. Community organizers were instrumental in forcing banks to give subprime loans to unqualified minority borrowers by using the "pitchforks" tactics - protesting in front of the banks, camping on the lawns of the bankers' family houses, intimidating families, and suing in courts. After the bankers were sufficiently roughed up, a community organizer would show up at their office to "negotiate" the bank's surrender in the form of bad loans and money for community organizations that pay community organizers for their "services." Squeezed between the "pitchforks" and the government (see Community Reinvestment Act), the banks survived by releasing the accumulated toxic assets to the rest of the financial system, which over the years poisoned the entire world economy. Now that the crisis has propelled a former "pitchfork operator" into power, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the new organizer in chief would try to "heal" the economy how he knows best: by continuing to squeeze businesses between the "pitchforks" and the government - a tactic that had caused the disease in the first place. Only now he is doing it on a global scale. Most Americans will probably associate this trend with the protection racket that was rampant in Chicago in the 1930s. It follows the same pattern: the mob, in conjunction with the unions, would organize strikes and protests, do physical damage, and intimidate business owners. Then a mob representative would meet with the owner and offer "protection" by saying "I'm the only thing between you and the pitchforks." After the Communists nationalized Siberian gold mines, the government's incompetence and lack of incentives sent gold production into a decline. Many of the managers and engineers had fled abroad; the foreign-made mining equipment lay in ruins. But the country badly needed gold to finance industrialization and prepare for war with Western capitalism. The popular sentiment, whipped up by the party-controlled media, was that "heads must roll." Failing to deliver the required quotas, the remaining managers and engineers were declared enemies of the people and either executed or sent to hard labor camps. That didn't help; the production continued to drop. That's when Nikolai Bukharin, a former community organizer in charge of industrial development, came up with an idea to infuse some capitalism and lease Siberian mines to British mining companies. The plan was approved by Stalin. The strike sounded absurd as the miners' wages and living conditions by then were among the best in the country. The foreign management didn't realize, of course, that the strike had been secretly ordered by the party's central committee as part of Bukharin's clever scheme. The unions wouldn't dare defy the party. The workers simply did what they had been ordered to do. The British gave in and raised the wages. But a few weeks later another strike broke out, with more picketing and demonstrations, as the unions demanded another significant raise and improvement of living conditions. The British gave in again. After yet another strike the Siberian miners already had a higher living standard than any of their Western counterparts, while the mining operation was becoming barely profitable. When the next anti-exploitation strike broke out, the capitalists cried to the Soviet government for help. Bukharin, on behalf of the party and the government, answered that he had no power over the unions. This was not a capitalist country where governments oppressed their workers. This was a workers' state, ruled by the workers who were getting angry at capitalist exploitation, and the government had to obey their will. Long story short, and not necessarily in these words, the gist of the message was that the Brits only had Stalin's mercy standing between them and the pitchforks, and they better not push it.
Finally the Brits fathomed the depth of the hole they'd dug themselves into. There was nothing else they could do except run away from the threat of the pitchforks as fast as they could. Shipping back the equipment would only increase their losses, so they left the machinery behind. As a result, the Soviet government got new working equipment, trained workers, and well-organized production - all free of charge. None of the captains of socialist industry lost any sleep; it was done for the common good of the workers, and so the end justified the means. According to a witness account, members of the party's central committee, including Stalin, laughed hysterically every time Bukharin retold the story of how the workers' state fooled Western capitalism. But the joke really was on the workers. As soon as the British left, the mines were taken over by the state, the wages dropped to the national average, and the usual misery ensued. The unions had done their job; there were no more strikes. Who would dare protest the party that acted in the interests of the workers? No one was foolish enough to stick his head into that noose and be declared enemy of the people. And since everyone acted smart and in the interests of the common good, the industry quickly declined to the pre-capitalist level. In 1937, Bukharin himself was declared an enemy of the people and, after a show trial, executed on unrelated charges. The allegations against him were as bogus and far-fetched as the very system he had helped to create - and of which he later became a victim. The gold-mining episode was perhaps one of the most innocent schemes he conjured in the interests of the common good. In the absence of economic incentives, the stagnant and unproductive industries could only be run by threats and intimidation. Those who think that the Soviet system was an aberration of socialism, please consider that it had been consistent with the principles of equality and the common good. Stalin's reign of terror was merely an inevitable end result of a collectivist utopian theory that contradicted human nature, vilifying people for "greed" and "selfishness," which were mere manifestations of their individuality, and punishing the desire to be free from state-run slavery. As post-Stalin liberal reforms softened the totalitarian system, they also made it more dysfunctional. With the fear of repressions withering away, the economy slowed down to a halt. And just as the last remaining fear was gone in the years of Perestroika, the country fell apart. This was a logical conclusion of an attempt to build a "workers' paradise" based on "progressive" collectivist morality, which turned workers into slaves and corrupted the society to such an extent that it required a partial return of totalitarian rule by Putin in order to rein in organized crime. But American "progressives" seem to be unable to learn from other people's mistakes, even if the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin himself is asking Obama to take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise "excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence." I don't often agree with Putin, but when he's right, he's right. "In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated." |
UPDATE:
An illustration that wasn't meant for this post but it's a good illustration nonetheless.


Quote:
But American "progressives" seem to be unable to learn from other people's mistakes, even if the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin himself is asking Obama to take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise "excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence."I don't often agree with Putin, but when he's right, he's right. "In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated."
{character OFF}
I never thought I'd see the day that the Russian leader was more concerned about the U.S. than its own president. As always, your observations drill right through the smokescreen with their clarity.
When the leader of the "other side" warns about the pitfalls of following his own country's path, a smart man would pay attention. Obama and his cronies aren't leading us to destruction because they think socialism is best for The People, they're doing it because it gives them power and control. Simply that.
It's no mistake that they're getting wealthy too, but wealth is just power in tangible form. Soros can only buy so many mansions, yachts, fancy cars, etc. - once you have all the material things you need plus all of them you want, what else is there but power? Soros and his ilk don't have time to "buy" everyone one person at a time so they're going the wholesale route.
{character ON}
It's obvious Comrade Putin was just using his KGB wiles to josh the great O, like when you were a kid and you wanted your little brother to think the chocolate cake you were cramming in your mouth was awful so he wouldn't want some too. Either that, or he needs an intensive beet shoveling refresher course.


Quote:

I see one problem. Comrade Moore has shrunk in width.
Perhaps this is due to the glories of both Obamacare™ and Obama's nationalization of food production and distribution.
--


Red Square
#50. Pastor of Muppets: Anyone trying to lay blame on minorities and the CRA for this crisis is either racist or ignorant; most likely both.No one is blaming minorities in causing the crisis. The blame lies on the demagogues who used minorities as a club to advance their agenda - and (only partially) on those who didn’t have the guts to resist the intimidation and stand on principle (although it’s easy to blame them when it wasn’t your child’s school that was being picketed).
Both ACORN and congressional Democrats used the race card a lot: ACORN blamed the banks for being racist when they initially rejected risky loans, and Democrats blamed Republicans for being racist when they tried to regulate the CRA along with Fanny and Freddy.
The fact that Pastor of Muppets decided to use the same blame game to defend the race demagogues, says a lot about where he’s coming from - and how honest he is with us, or maybe even with himself.
———-
On a different note, I was expecting to see more comments about the main point of the above story, which is how allegedly “moral” arguments for the “common good” and “for the people” overwhelmingly end up in doing immoral things and hurting the people they set out to defend. And how universal this is - be it Russia, America, France, or Zimbabwe.
This pattern can be detected in the CRA affair as well, but it’s much bigger than that. That the argument got diverted into discussing the CRA may be the result of the weakness that all decent people have - they can’t pass a hungry troll without feeding him. And trolls use this trick all the time to their advantage.
Here we go. If we can blame people’s decency for feeding the trolls, we might as well blame the bankers for feeding ACORN.
And let’s also blame the frog who agreed to transport the scorpio across the river even though he knew that the scorpio would eventually sting him. In result, they both drowned. And the scorpio family sued the frog family for the wrongful death of their brother caused by the frog’s bad judgment.


Red Square
And let’s also blame the frog who agreed to transport the scorpio across the river even though he knew that the scorpio would eventually sting him. In result, they both drowned. And the scorpio family sued the frog family for the wrongful death of their brother caused by the frog’s bad judgment.Comrade Red Square, everyone knows why the frog has no tail. It is a common fact that those frivolous frogs also eat fish larva. It has also been said that those stingy scorpions enjoy the comforts of peoples sleeping bags in the desert. Now, one living in the swamp and the other other in the desert, how twain shall they meet as the Red River rises and recedes?
This is important question comrade, important question.
You see the PitchFork Operator in Chief entered the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre with Comrade Kerouac and it only ended in Gusenberg saying ""I'm not gonna talk - nobody shot me".
Now where the hell is Comrade Bugs Bunny? Does anybody have any carrots around here?

Excellent Article Comrade, we are on the same page...


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Commissar Obamissar V
A pitchfork is merely the skeleton of a shovel, Comrades.As is visible on this x-ray:

Only this pitchfork is pointed in a direction that may catch Obama off-guard.


Red Square
The unions had done their job; there were no more strikes. Who would dare protest the party that acted in the interests of the workers? No one was foolish enough to stick his head into that noose and be declared enemy of the people.
This Bukharin looks like a "Kewpie Doll."

If you have a
I drink your
Don't bully me
PLEASE. MY FAITH HAS BEEN LOST AND I NEED
A NEW WAY. I ASK FOR YOUR HELP --
I TOOK WHAT I WANTED WHEN YOU WEREN'T LOOKING
AND THE BLOOD OF THE
DO YOU THINK GOD IS GOING TO BALANCE
YOUR INVESTMENTS? GOD DOESN'T SAVE IDIOTS,
YOU ARE BROKE AND YOU ARE LAME AND
YOU ARE DONE FOR.



The whole angry mob thing seems to reinforce my belief that, a person is smart, maybe a genius, but people are dumb as a box of rocks. Where you get one person that talks louder than everyone else and everyone turns and listens then follows.
That the greed of many can effect the one. Demanding more from the Brits when they were already living better the the rest of the "people". But as far as an attempt to take down capitalism, it was a good try.
{retruned to karector}

More shoveling for myself. [ trudges back to the gulag, shovel over shoulder]


RED VIKTOR
That the greed of many can effect the one. Demanding more from the Brits when they were already living better the the rest of the "people".I'm sure the workers knew they were doing the wrong thing. But they were simply fulfilling orders. There was nothing anybody could do to stop this. The unions were only a front for the Party, which ruled over everyone undivided.





Once again your shovel scoops the poop! And Media Dog keeps hiding his piles.
A little verse, in a book authored by a known thoughtcriminal, that was once taught in American high schools:
The greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting; the people who support plans specifically designed to achieve serfdom, but hide behind the empty assertion that they are lovers of freedom, with no concrete meaning attached to the word; the people who believe that the content of ideas need not be examined, that principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one's eyes shut. They expect, when they find themselves in a world of bloody ruins and concentration camps, to escape moral responsibility by wailing: "But I didn't mean this!"
Ayn Rand
April, 1946
Sounds and looks very familiar.
In Socialist Solidarity!


RED VIKTOR
So the unions were on the wrong end of the "heads must roll"?The unions in the USSR were an arm of the Party - or hand puppets, depending how you look at it. They didn't oppose or negotiate anything, nor did they have the power to do so. Their responsibilities were limited to recreation, healthcare, and maintaining the morale (including sorting out family troubles, domestic violence, putting the fear of the Party into alcoholics who cut days of work but couldn't be fired because that would mean unemployment, and exerting the power of collective indignation on "un-conscientious" workers who had the audacity not to toe the Party line in aspects that were not alcohol-related).
As far as I know there was only one unauthorized strike in the Soviet history - around 1962 in the Russian city of Novocherkask, and I don't think the unions were any part of it. The workers spontaneously stopped working and went into the street to protest low wages, rising prices, and empty shelves. It was under Khrushchev, when Stalin's state of perpetual terror had somewhat subsided and the economy began to falter. Yet it was still dangerous to oppose the government in that way. The fact that the workers knew it but did it anyway shows how desperate their condition had become.
They attacked the Party and KGB people, and fraternized with the locally stationed soldiers. So the government sent ethnically non-Russian troops from other places, who shot at the demonstrators and plowed over them with tanks. About 30 people were killed as a result. How many went to prison I don't know. There were no mass protests after that for a very long time.
I have a lot more to say on this but that would probably take writing another serious article. For now, I have discovered an interesting site with the following 30-second videos:
And there's more where it came from!


Red Square
Commissar Obamissar V
A pitchfork is merely the skeleton of a shovel, Comrades.As is visible on this x-ray:
Only this pitchfork is pointed in a directionthat may catch Obama off-guard.
I knew it! Thank you for continuing to promote The Current Truth, Comrade!


Publius Valerius
Citizens,The new "American Gothic"! Sticking it to the working classes!
Publius
That pitchfork might actually make a nice hair pic for the Messiah's new "do".
I was going to tweak this picture in Photoshop a bit ... but damn .. this thing is scary as hell as is, I don't think I could FUBAR it more.
In honoring our 44th US President, the Chia Pet company presents this Special Edition Chia Obama.



Infidel Castrate
In honoring our 44th US President, the Chia Pet company presents this Special Edition Chia Obama.I heard there were comrades who were so insulted by this Chia that they were crying out for Walgreen's to take it off their shelves, so if you want your very own O'Chia, best to get over to Walgreen's asap before these comrades get their way.


Leninka
Infidel Castrate
In honoring our 44th US President, the Chia Pet company presents this Special Edition Chia Obama.I heard there were comrades who were so insulted by this Chia that they were crying out for Walgreen's to take it off their shelves, so if you want your very own O'Chia, best to get over to Walgreen's asap before these comrades get their way.
We should demand they make some Congressional Special Editions as well ... Chia Barney, Chia Schumer, Chia Reed.
I think if they made Chia's for the 2 lunatics below they would be top sellers. No need to keep a big dog in your house for protection. These 2 would keep burglers out of your house.




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Zampolit Blokhayev
Good News! Exploited, non-unionized, sex worker silenced her capitalist oppressor!--
ZB
But Prince Harry didn't do enough to add to the party's coffers in Nevada...
Brothel sex tax proposal fails:

10/04/2009 - 08:53:04
A US state proposal to levy a $5 tax on sex acts in brothels died in a state Senate committee.
The three to four vote in the Nevada Senate Taxation Committee was one shy of the four needed to keep the proposal afloat.
Committee Chairman Bob Coffin, the Las Vegas Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the state is desperate for revenue and has not collected taxes from prostitution since it was legalized in some rural counties more than 30 years ago.
Senator Mike McGinness, a Rethuglican from Fallon who voted against the tax, said he wouldn’t support a new tax on services.
Mr Coffin estimated the tax would have raised at least $2m a year. Nevada is facing a more than $2.8bn revenue shortfall.


This is obviously setup conducted by Billy Mays to defend his turf as king of infomercials!


Red Square
RED VIKTOR
So the unions were on the wrong end of the "heads must roll"?The unions in the USSR were an arm of the Party - or hand puppets, depending how you look at it.... now, I have discovered an interesting site with the following 30-second videos:
Most Excellent Comrade Red Square! I shall pass this site on to my comrades in The Union!


Gulag 4 Alfred
Zampolit Blokhayev
Good News! Exploited, non-unionized, sex worker silenced her capitalist oppressor!--
ZB
But Prince Harry didn't do enough to add to the party's coffers in Nevada...
Brothel sex tax proposal fails:

10/04/2009 - 08:53:04
A US state proposal to levy a $5 tax on sex acts in brothels died in a state Senate committee.
The three to four vote in the Nevada Senate Taxation Committee was one shy of the four needed to keep the proposal afloat.
Committee Chairman Bob Coffin, the Las Vegas Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the state is desperate for revenue and has not collected taxes from prostitution since it was legalized in some rural counties more than 30 years ago.
Senator Mike McGinness, a Rethuglican from Fallon who voted against the tax, said he wouldn’t support a new tax on services.
Mr Coffin estimated the tax would have raised at least $2m a year. Nevada is facing a more than $2.8bn revenue shortfall.
Interesting history of the "Ranch". In the 90's the owner was cheating on his taxes and the IRS seized the property. It allegedly was actually ran by the US government for awhile.
Seems the definintion of Socialism could have been expanded then to include "the government controls the means of reproduction".
But they couldn't even do that right, but this just proves the government will always find a way to screw you.
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2007/08/this-is-exactly-what-im-talking-about.html
Now of course since they can't run a whore house and make money, why should we let them take over the car industry, banking, insurance, housing, and heath care industry?
But why should facts get in the way of a Liberal agenda?


Zampolit Blokhayev
Good News! Exploited, non-unionized, sex worker silenced her capitalist oppressor!--
ZB
I wonder if the hotel staff used Sham Wow to clean up the mess later?


Commissar Obamissar V
Comrade Blokhayev-This is obviously setup conducted by Billy Mays to defend his turf as king of infomercials!
Indeed it is obvious. It makes me wonder if Billy Mays has been through The Party's™ indoctrination program at a KMTC™.
--


Infidel Castrate

Curses...soiled myself once again!
OMGROTFLMAO!
;-)


It shouts while projectile vomiting someone else's slime.


Hat tip to Moonbattery... Even the ultra-Progressives of the PPC of Oregon had a Tea Party- and a pitchfork operator.


Sorry for the redundancy.


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After all, what was right for mortgages is right for credit cards, right? The world will not be right until we have endured a second financial meltdown.




mi
Barack Hussein Obama commemorates the 90th Anniversary of the Glorious Subbotnik of 1919:Who gets the Red Shovel of the Month, comrades?
Comrade mi,
What an excellent posting! It brought tears to this old zampolit's eyes to see His Holiness, Lenin, participating is valorous deeds of socialist labor!
And to see General Secretary Obama following in the Holy footsteps of Lenin .... it was ... heartwarming. I want to know one thing, though. Where the hell was Rahm Emmanuel? Notice we never see him out amoungst the unwashed masses, shovel in hand. Oh well! He was probably out
--
ZB


Just think of the rapine and raping and theft that are going on still in his name. And now, for your entertainment, in Washington!