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Stalin Cried
Of Bad Sons:
The Death of the World War II Generation
CBS tried to air a miniseries on Ronald Reagan. The only problem with this project was that it was an infernal puff piece for a very bad man. No one in the United States would dare make a good film about one of the real heroes of the age: Joseph Stalin.
Along with a great many other progressives, I wonder if anyone is ever going to tell the truth in the United States about this brave man and his noble experiment. Stalin is frequently blamed for procedural snafus, as if the United States did not know all about that, but never given the credit for universal education, free health care, and some of the largest dams ever constructed in the history of humankind.
Listen to a talk radio personality discuss the Soviet near-miracle (the only miracle in which thinking humans believe), if you have the stomach. Once “Frank” Pastore ventured into cultural analysis with a guest that centered on the former Soviet Union. What I heard disgusted me and made me cry. Talk radio does not usually drive me to tears, since like all progressives, I don’t take it that seriously.
But the dishonor to a great socialist and a dreamer that the Pastore show contained filled me with sorrow for the base and ignoble persons who would allow such a thing to air. Weak and useless talkers who would not have dared to face the Stalin wit when he was well are going to ridicule when he is dead. The lion cannot strike back so the jackals circle for the food. It was all genocide this, and genocide that. Lies and more lies As if a nation that still has men and women on death row should talk! Free Lee Malvo and then we will talk about genocide!
I only remember crying one other time when watching a political event. Oddly, it came during the funeral of much lesser man than Stalin. I cried at the Nixon funeral. Richard Nixon was the first truly evil president I remember. His victory in 1972 is the first political contest I can recall causing me to grow physically ill. His resignation during the Watergate scandal came on my mother's birthday at a summer protest of a nuclear power plant. None of those facts is of any great historic or much personal significance. Nixon was not a hero to me in any sense of the word. But I cried when they buried Richard Nixon.
I cried, because the camera forced me to look at faces at the funeral. It was the first time I realized that leadership was being passed to the next generation and so many brave socialists had lost their last chance to lead. The unblinking eye of the camera forced me to acknowledge that my grandfather's and grandmother’s generation had become old. This seemed unthinkably sad to me. America has failed to provide them a culture where gay marriage can be safely practiced in Alabama. Their progressive promise was so great and good, think of F.D.R. and Johnson,that it seems to have debilitated the next two generations. We either resent these members of the Greatest Generation or we despair of emulating them.
The presidents that remained sat in a row at the Nixon funeral. They looked tired, every one of them. The evils they had done in the name of capitalism had worn them out, but that was not the only answer. We have to acknowledge that the World War II generation is passing and utopia, heaven here on earth, has still not come.
Even Stalin, the greatest of them all, could not pretend to be the future and not the past. He died, like all men. With his will of steel, Stalin fooled us for a little while. We could believe that the World War II generation might have found life and youth eternal. Stalin’s mane of thick hair, strong chest, and crooked grin seemed to defy age. He got older, but not old. His face crinkled, but did not wrinkle. But the day of Nixon’s funeral, Stalin had been dead for what seemed like centuries, and our most progressive president had been Bill Clinton, better than Reagan, but no real liberal.
What does this mean? We must redouble our effort to find immortality through science. We must harness the power of the state to find a cure for the greatest curse: death. We must defy the “gods” of the conservative and become immortal NOW. Heaven is not our future home, truly the Kingdom of heaven is within us. We must NOW be as wise as serpents as gentle as doves.
When I was little, I hated Richard Nixon. Later, a worse Californian would empower me with an even deeper rage. Yet one cannot hate the present Bush as much as one would wish. He is too inconsequential. One loathes him, but it is not motivating enough. Our hate is not deep and bitter enough, especially when we remember how well and how deeply Stalin could hate. "Hate," you say. "But aren't we the church of love." Yes. We are. But that love demands a hatred of hate. And Stalin hated hate with all his being. There was real rage against oppression in his soul. A rage that dared even the courts of heaven. It is that iron and bitter hate we must renew in the year to come if Bush is to be overthrown. This hate is the flip side of the accepting love here at Saint Chad.
Tennyson, despite his misogyny, was right: “the old order changeth, giving place to new, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” Change is what we must live for. Change for the sake of change. No generation is without fault, save the present generation. The NOW is always proper. We must not become part of the past. We must bring the groovy with us, forward into each age. In some ways, the Greatest Generation lingered too long and lost their groove. Having failed to bring on the progressive utopia, they have the duty to die and so fertilize the earth, completing the circle of life. We cannot look back, but we must look forward.
For this we know: Stalin will not return to battle the forces of radical Republicanism. He fought with unrelenting, dogged, even fanatical determination against capitalism. He defeated it, but now the Cold War is past and Stalin the Cold Warrior must move on to some better place there to heal his wounds. This new battle is against George Walker Bush, the quintessential Boomer. We need new Stalins, some from this very church, any man, women, animal, and plant (yes! God would even use the plants)! None are excluded from this Georgian call.
Soon our illegitimate President will face John Kerry, so imperfect, but so hopeful for redemption. He cannot be a Stalin, I think, but he would know how to bend the knee to one if such a person appeared. I trust America has grown sick enough of President Bush to reject this petulant adolescent who only knows how to complain. George Bush is evil. John Kerry is not good, he is no Green, but he is good enough to know the good when he sees it. John Kerry may be the forerunner, the Baptist, to our own Man of Steel, our superman.
Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfield are wicked men undoing the good done by the previous generations. I believe America’s Boomers have at last realized that they are in charge. Mom and Dad cannot run the world this time while they protest without impact. We have the power to recreate a soviet paradise, a liberal and progressive state, and so make the future NOW.
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