I'm a Communist

I had just moved from Boston, MA to Castanet, France outside Toulouse. Like the U.S at the time with its Bush vs. Dukakis election, France was holding an election. French politics, then as now, are usually an interesting chaos. 

I saw many large billboards, "Je suis un Communiset et je vote." "I'm a Communist and I vote." Unlike in the U.S., French Communists are legal. 

Over the years, I've been in a number of towns and cities and seen an office for the Communist Party along with offices for other parties: RN, RE, PS, LR, McDem, LE, HOR all of whom hold more than 20 deputies in Parliament. 

No one goes apoplectic over a Communist. No rock star cancels a year's concerts in a city which he claimed falsely elected a "commie" mayor, showing his ignorance on the term "commie."

Fast forward and I was working in Geneva, Switzerland. One of my clerks and her recently late husband were active Communists and no one thought a thing about it. 

I didn't care about her political affiliations. I did care she did a lousy job and was always spreading false rumors having nothing to do with politics. It was more her low intelligence* and character than any party membership. I hated to fire her as a widow needing the money, so a colleague took her into his department. After a few weeks of misbehavior she was gone.  

I grew up watching "I Led Three Lives portraying Herbert Philbrick as a citizen, communist and counterspy.

I hid under my school desk for bomb drills and at night hoped that the Russians wouldn't kill me before morning. I wondered if a little Russian girl was as afraid of me and my country as I was of her and hers.

My mother thought McCarthy was saving America from Communism, but my father wasn't so sure. I found the television hearings that we watched more an annoyance. They preempted my kid programs.

The words "socialist" or "socialism" as in creeping socialism were enough to scuttle adding fluoride to our water. They still can kill a political career.

As I studied history, I learned much more about many political and economic systems. I also learned that if they were good or bad depended more on who was in power. Someone once said that "benevolent dictators were the best form of government, but rare to find."

Right now the U.S. has out-of-control capitalism. Safety regulations and legal protections are being gutted. Rules and programs that protect the middle and lower classes are being weakened. Meanwhile a few oligarchs are doing very well. Politicians  bought and paid for by those at the top take care of themselves first wrapping their reasons in coded lies repeated over and over.

Listening to TV Sunday shows it is fun to time how long it takes for certain phrases or names. Biden usually comes up within 50 seconds and if not Biden, Democrats if it is a Republican interviewee. 

The lack of economic education, never mind history, means that power playing to ignorance can win votes. Sometimes I see videos where ordinary Americans are asked questions about the U.S. that they should know like; "What was the Civil War about?" or "What are the three parts of the U.S. Government?" They didn't know. I hope, that most people answered correctly and were edited out in the final video, but I doubt it.

In Boston, someone from New York asked me where they could find New England. When I worked for a credit union I needed to send money to a friend in Burkina Faso. The following week a friend in New Mexico needed me to pay for a service. Having sent money recently to New Mexico, which the employee didn't know was in the U.S. they thought Burkina Faso might be a city in New Mexico. 

If some Americans can't recognize pictures of their own leaders, I wonder how many people know who is in the photo above? 

Note: I'm not a Communist and the term Democratic Socialist probably fits me best. Mostly I'm a writer, wife, mother horrified by what is happening in my birth country. 

*I'm not saying Communists have low intelligence. There is no IQ correlation.