I hate communists

Met a communist at a party yesterday. (Which was, BTW, a really lovely party where we celebrated the visit of a friend of our who lives in the US. The company - the communist nonwithstanding - the cake, the wine, the conversation, everything was great.)

It is, however, a lot more fun to write about the weird creatures one meets.

Julie introduced us: "R., this is Vera. She is from Russia."
"Eeww," - said the man, - "I am Polish."

Later we talk some more. He turns out to have never lived in Poland, "but my blood is Polish", he says. He's moved around, lived here and there. For a guy who has never lived in Poland his historical grievances are fairly strong. Not that they aren't justified - Russia has been a really bad neighbor to Poland and much everyone else. I am just not sure that they are a very polite topic for conversation with someone you have just met, but then I am not a poster girl for social grace myself, either.

He tells me that he does not like Americans either (that's after learning that I am an American). After he's expressed disapproval for both my country of birth and my country of citizenship I sort of expect him to say something bad about Finland, too, but he does not go there. Maybe he is just rubbing me the wrong way, but at this point I feel like telling him that from my own historical grievance prespective there is no real difference between Russians and Poles, and elaborate on that.

Much later he start talking about how he believes in communism. I start wondering (not aloud) what kind of person would believe in communism in spite of apparently knowing what it has done to Poland about which he apparently cares. He gets to hear my opinion on communism and goes on to explain that I can't possibly understand anything about it because my mind is clouded by having lived in the Soviet Union.

Once again: there should have been Nurmberg trials for communists, just to show that they are evil to the kind of people that are not capable of understanding it all by themselves. There has been many communists countries in the last century; all of them failed, and for very good reasons, but we still find morons who believe that if a communist state were led by themselves as opposed to, say, Stalin, everything would be different.

The idea "from everyone according to his ability, to everyone according to his need" is inherently evil and cannot lead to anything else besides dwindling abilities, rising needs and the rise of a political elite consisting of the kind of people who enjoy defining everyone else's abilities and needs. When people say that they consider it a good idea I immediately start wondering whether they are, in fact, exactly that kind of people.

That's just the theory. In practice communism also usually involves mass murder committed by the state, and almost always involves closing borders to prevent the citizens from escaping the workers' paradise.

And don't even get me started on the people who say "communism is such a wonderful idea, too bad that the human nature is so greedy and selfish that it cannot be implemented properly". If a drug company made some drug that is supposed to do something good but does not work on humans, would you say "this is such a wonderful drug, too bad that human biochemistry is all wrong for it"? If an architect designed a building that cannot be built of existing materials, would you blame the materials for it?

I really feel like sending all communists to a re-education camp (hah, it shows that I was raised in a communist country) where they would live according to communist principles and actually try out what they preach. We could install cameras everywhere there and it would make for a great reality show, too.

The camp of course would have to be fairly large (there must be at least tens of thousands of communists in the world) and self-sufficient. They will just have to work together for the common good and distribute the fruits of their labors among themselves according to their needs. We'll pick up the bodies later.