There is a Jewish tale, in which a man is promised that he will be granted any wish he chooses, so long as his neighbour will get twice as much. After some thought he states his wish: please put me out one of my eyes! This is a very American attitude. An American refuses to get free medical care, if the condition is that others will get it, too. This we learned from the rallies against Obama’s health reform. The slogans and ideas of the demonstrators were just too weird!

A little girl asks how she will pay the bill for the reformed health services
(http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/1399/slide_1399_20079_large.jpg). This little girl - or rather, her parents - did not go out and ask how she was going to pay off the bills for the Iraqi and Afghani wars, how she was going to pay for the US involvement in Palestine, how she would repay the trillions given away to the bankers. Up until now, Big Government was good. It provided billions for AIG - ok. Billions for a new fighter jets - great. Billions to Blackwater to kill more Afghanis and Pakistanis - fine. Billions to Israel - perfect. But funding for health? What a communist notion!

The US health insurance problem is something we foreigners can’t understand. All of us, whether in England or Russia or Israel or France, have a national health service; we regret only that it is not as good as it used to be. But how can normal people prefer turning their health into a commodity and making it dependent on their bank accounts? This strange attitude is rooted in America’s older ills.

The US is an experimental ‘project’ – to see what would happen when a rather empty space is colonized by people of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and affiliations, all moved by the desire to get rich and knowing no moral inhibitions but the Smith and Wesson. At first, they destroy the natives and the neighbours, afterwards they turn to cannibalism. If the Americans do not eat each other, it is only because they have found somebody else to eat together.

America was informed by love of profit and by hatred of communism. Her anti-communism is visceral, brutal, basic, inherent. The United States was created as the supreme sheriff, as the bastion of staunch individualism, of ‘homo homini lupus est’, of rejection of the notions of solidarity and mutual help. This was the plan of project designers.

Human nature being what it is, this satanic plan was partly upset by the inherent goodness of men and women. There are many wonderful Americans, rebels against crass materialism and unbridled greed, but they are isolated in their milieu; the best American characters are living and fighting alone. Such is Thoreau in his Walden. Such is Ishmael aboard the Pequod. Such is the Old Man at the Sea. Solidarity - togetherness - is conspicuous by its absence from American literature. 

Every European state, from England to Russia, has its National Health, for every nation considers itself a living body, and every member of the nation is as valued as a body part. All these nations are or were Christian and solidarist. Their citizens were embraced by one church. The US is different because of the anti-solidarist and anti-Christian spirit of her founders. Her Manifest Destiny did not connect to the faith. The US founders openly denied she was a Christian nation when concluding the Tripoli Treaty, and their denial was sincere, because solidarity is a basic tenet of the Christian faith.

Every part of American society - Left, Right, churches, parties - are touched by this lack of compassion magnified by envy. The US Right is obsessed with anti-communism. This goes without saying for the imperialist Right of Ronald Reagan and George Bushes Junior and Senior. What is upsetting is that even the traditional anti-imperialist, nationalist American Right (the “paleocons”) are equally anti-communist and anti-Christian. I, for one, hoped they would understand their mistakes of yesteryear and become allies of other anti-imperialist forces including China, Russia and Iran. Alas, while they do not like neo-cons, and this is all to the good, they are no better themselves: Instead of fighting Arabs, they would rather kill Russians.

In a recent essay, Patrick Buchanan glorifies Adolf Hitler’s Germany and vilifies Communist Russia. He is sorry that the US allied with the Russians against the Germans, and not vice versa. Though Russia is no longer Communist, he would like to fight it anyway.

Mind you, I do not need smelling salts every time Hitler’s name is mentioned. I do not think everyone has to hate Hitler. I am at peace with people who admire Hitler for sentimental reasons: they like his solidarism, or German greatness or his vegetarianism, or his treatment of banks and bankers or unification of German lands. But there is a red line:  people who admire Hitler because he attacked Russia and/or massacred civilians are my enemies too.  In the battle of Stalingrad, I know which side I am on. And Buchanan is on the other side.

Similar anti-communist and anti-Russian notes prevail in other far-right white-nationalist writings. Be on the look out for the telling word “hordes”. For neo-cons, there are Muslim hordes, for the white-nationalists, these are Russian hordes, as in Patrick Buchanan: “By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin”. He forgot to explain that this happened because the people of these great capitals had decided to try their luck in Moscow under Hitler’s banners, and it may well happen again if this lesson is forgotten.

Our erstwhile friend Tom Sunic came from his search for a New Right to the Old Hitlerism: “The last shot in the European capital of Berlin was fired by a drunken Soviet soldier, killing the young French Waffen SS volunteer.” Well, God bless the Soviet soldier, drunken or sober, for his steady mark, and to hell with the SS-man, young or middle-aged, especially if he volunteered to do that butcher job.

Buchanan writes of “the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin”. Hatred of Stalin, the man who stopped Hitler, created  modern Russia and resurrected the Russian Church after the Trotskyite excesses, is the common ground of these anti-communists. If they care at all about the Russian people as they pretend they do, they can ask them and find out that despite decades of anti-communist propaganda, Stalin is much loved by Russians.

In the huge recent poll run by the Russian TV, Stalin was chosen ‘the most important personality in the whole history of Russia’ next to St Alexander Nevsky. The Russians remember that Stalin became the leader of an illiterate country devastated by civil war - a country of no industry, of dying agriculture, of no money and of plenty of debts, surrounded by enemies. He created industry, built housing and roads, created full free health care and comprehensive free education for all; he made Russia the best educated country in the world.

Unprejudiced Americans may find Stalin’s simple attitude to life and business rather to their liking. He’d have solved the current financial crisis by dispatching the bankers to chop wood somewhere deep in Oregon and by cancelling all debts. The automobile plants of Detroit would be saved. When Stalin discovered a Zionist Lobby in his country, he smashed it on the spot instead of surrendering to them, while ordinary Jews who were loyal to Russia retained their positions. That is why his name is besmirched by anti-communists.

This is neither the time nor the place to deal with impossible exaggerations of alleged Soviet crimes. It is enough to state that they are fantastic. Nobody, even Stalin, could have killed one hundred million people out of one hundred sixty million, won a war and yet found himself with two hundred fifty million at the end of it.

This sick hatred of communism pours out of a column by another anti-imperialist right-winger, Chuck Baldwin. This “alternative candidate” fumed against the Chinese national flag, which is red, being hoisted at the White House’s South Lawn for an anniversary of the Chinese national holiday. He speaks of “the extreme offensiveness of flying the Communist Chinese flag”. This is “unbelievable, unreal, horrific, obscene, even traitorous… for the communist leaders of Mao's China are the Butchers of Beijing, and this proves … the communist leanings of President Barack Obama”.

Further, Baldwin spreads the heart-rending story of the Chinese people’s suffering under the cruel leadership of Mao. If Communist leadership is so bad, how come the US is indebted to China to the tune of a few trillions? Before Mao, China was an impoverished semi-colony of the West, ‘the Chinese and dogs were not allowed’ into some parts of Shanghai, famines were annual, and Anglo-American navies studiously supplied the people with opium when they weren’t busy burning Beijing Palace. Now, after so many years of Communist tyranny, the Chinese are a shining example for the rest of the world.

In any case, flying the Chinese national flag at such events is not a proclamation of Communism as state doctrine, it is just a normal sign of courtesy. Likewise, flying the Israeli flag over the same lawn was not considered by the sane as a sign of submission to the Elders of Zion, nor flying the British flag as cancellation of Declaration of Independence. It is pity that the Obama administration allegedly got cold feet and decided to cancel the event. This suppleness of Obama’s back is not a good sign, as we have already learned in the Middle East.

The US Left is afraid of communism as well. In many, many articles and responses to the anti-Obama rallies, left-wing authors invariably stress the racism of the demonstrators. William Rivers Pitt called the “white, middle-aged, overweight, pissed-off right-wingers… a Klan rally minus the bedsheets and torches.” Susie Day pretends that the rallies were formed by those whites upset by Obama’s mouthing off to a white cop.

I am not a great believer in racism. Reputation of this sin is largely overblown, to the best of my knowledge. The Russians, who are supposed to be racists, loved Stalin, a Georgian. The French and the Germans, presumably also racist, had a Jewish prime minister and a foreign minister respectively in the last century. The Americans had no problem electing the black Obama. So much for racism. The American leftists who explain everything by racism are barking up the wrong tree, and they know it – but they dare not speak about the real problems.

This sick fear of human solidarity is American society’s knee-jerk reaction. It was activated by the Lobby in order to undermine President Obama. Because he spoke against Israeli expansion, because he mentioned Palestinian rights and sorrows, they fight against him on every possible occasion – even on the issue of national health. If Obama would just do everything they want in the Middle East, his domestic initiatives would pass as easily as a steamer through the Golden Gate.

Obama is attacked at every step. Look at the Middle East: Israel wants to bomb Iran. The President refused Netanyahu’s pleas to attack Tehran, but the Lobby doesn’t take no for an answer. In the Voice of the Lobby, a.k.a. The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens impossibly claims: Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War. How? Obama’s refusal to attack Iran is “pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran”.

The Voice of the Lobby does not hide the fact that such a strike could well usher in a “price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between.” For a normal reader, the conclusion is clear: that’s why Obama forbade the Israelis to attack Iran. But the Lobby’s sophist offers another solution: let Obama’s America attack Iran instead of Israel. Obama’s refusal to interfere with Iran is presented as “Obama's pushing Israel toward war”. Begorrah!

While the enemy is active, no friends are forthcoming to help the embattled American President. Many of us received and forwarded an email claiming that Obama supported the coup d’etat in Honduras. But much less attention was paid when Obama actually cut off US aid to Honduras in response to the coup.

Sensing this loneliness of the President, Netanyahu ridicules his mild and limited demands. There is no other word for Israel’s response – that they will freeze some settlements’ construction work for a few months. Such a response is only marginally better than “shove it”. This was followed by an announcement that some five hundred new Jewish homes will be built in the teeth of Obama’s demand. Obama does not dare to push intransigent Israel any more, for Congress and the Senate are in the Jewish pocket, and these powerful Jews prefer Zionism to Communism.

What a pity! Once upon a time, the Jews were all for Communism and none for Zionism, and the human lot markedly improved. In a remarkable article, Winston Churchill wrote in 1920s: the Jews are choosing between Communism and Zionism, let us direct them towards Zionism so they will isolate themselves and stop bothering us. His plan was realised: Jews were seduced by the Zionist idea, parted with communism and became its enemies.

The result was quite sad: the positive contribution of Israeli Jews to mankind’s welfare is next to zero, unless you count the development of new torture and surveillance techniques. Jews elsewhere waste their abilities and time on the same rotten Zionist project, instead of helping their fellow countrymen to improve their lives. Winston Churchill lit a candle, and its light attracts the butterflies who die in its flames. The daring report of Judge Richard Goldstone is a first harbinger of a weather change: despite his pro-Israel sympathies he condemned the recent Zionist atrocities in Gaza.
 
Now it is time for Obama to move forward fearlessly. He should listen to his fellow- Americans. If they are so upset and worried by immigration, stop immigration completely. Send away illegal aliens, or legalise those who have lived long enough in America. Show people that you care about them.

Proceed with the health care. This field is ripe for revolution. Only in a time of crisis can a great leader enact radical reforms:

- Borrow the script from Illich’s Medical Nemesis, and minimise the cost of medical care. Do it the Cuban way. 

- Treat health care like fire brigades – human bodies are no less important than buildings. Nobody is amazed that the fire brigades are not private. Turn health care into a public service, and make all doctors public employees. 

- Ban private medical care. 

- Provide medical help for everyone, at the state’s expense. 

- Stop expensive live-saving, life-supporting devices. No transplantations, no complicated infertility treatments, no reproductive technology, no heart-and-brain operations, no abortions. 

- Cut down research. Let incurable diseases remain incurable.

- Allow people to get born and to die; this is normal, as opposed to this morbid fear of death.

- While he's at it, nationalise pharmaceutical companies. Let them sell medicine to the national health service at the cost of production.

Thus the national health system will become good, simple, comprehensive and inexpensive. Communism? Yes! Good for you? Yes, unless you are a wealthy gynaecologist. And Comrade Stalin would approve of it!

[Courtesy shamireaders]