I am watching Oliver Stone's "Untold History" and, wow, I have to say ...

[redgreenandblue]

90. I was thinking something similar today...

I was thinking about communism, and about what I learned from Oliver Stone's docus, and I came to think that communism, more precisely totalitarian Soviet communism (not the Marxian kind which never existed) with its hierarchy and its centrally controlled economy somehow seems like a system well suited to fight a total war that threatens the very existence of a nation. It doesn't amount for much in peace times, for it heavily oppresses its citizens and generally doesn't deliver high levels of comfort, but shit did it work well against nazi Germany. For one, Stalin could easily do such things as order the relocation of the populations of entire cities for strategic purposes, or by force draft citizens into working in factories to produce weapons.

There is something in the Sun Tsu book on warfare about always allowing leaving an escape route open for the enemy. A person with his back against the wall will fight like the proverbial "cornered beast". Communism was good at making people do that, precisely because it was an inhumane system.

But then again, a democracy can switch to "martial law", which basically amounts to the same thing. That goes to show that democracy is a fragile thing, which is all the more in jeopardy in times of crisis.

Thinking about such things does make me think that one should never take the comfort levels one is currently experiencing for granted. The Russians lived through a hell during the war that no person born in the US these days could ever imagine.