Communism is Not Dead
No, of course communism’s not dead; it’s locked in my basement.
Before explaining myself, I would like to introduce a few facts to this discussion:
– The word ‘communism’ is derived from the French 19th Century word communisme, meaning “common.”
– ‘Common People’ is the third track off Pulp’s 1995 album Different Class.
– The video for ‘Common People’ featured a sprightly young Sadie Frost.
– Sadie Frost was married to Jude Law.
– Frost and Law’s divorce involved a bevy of “he said, she said” accusations.
– He Said, She Said was a film starring… Kevin Bacon.
Thus, as this rigorous scientific analysis—sanctified by academia and intellectuals worldwide—proves, decorated actor Kevin Bacon is communism, and is also very, very much alive.
It is interesting to note that He Said, She Said hit selected theatres for a powerhouse 2-week run (give or take) in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen-Hundred and Ninety-One. In the storied annuals of communist history, 1991 was an important year. Those of you with a keen interest in matters Ukrainian will remember the soviet state’s role in the signing of the Belavezha Accords that brought about an end to the 69-year-old Soviet Union, just two weeks shy of the mighty state’s ‘Super 70’ birthday extravaganza.
While the Commonwealth of Independent States was emerging from the primordial ooze of the Soviet Union’s socialist crevasse, actor Kevin Bacon was hitting the red carpet alongside Kevin Costner and director Oliver Stone to promote a new ditty they’d been working on. The film was called JFK, and Bacon had ensnared the all-important role of Willie O’Keefe, the man whose testimony implicated Clay Shaw to Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and a JFK assassination conspiracy. It’s also important to remember that O’Keffe was a figment of Oliver Stone’s imagination, much like the director’s sense of humility and relevance in 21st century American cinema (oh snap).
JFK. JFK. Three letters so troublesome, so unique, so scarred, they make MJO look like a poor man’s JJW, when we all know that ain’t the truth. Truth is stranger than fiction, and as much as Willie O’Keefe was fiction, the ever-present threat of communism in the years of JFK certainly wasn’t.
In November 1961, JFK authorised a series of delicious CIA operations against the communist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. The unsuccessful attack, codenamed ‘Operation Mongoose’ was followed by the equally embarrassing Bay of Pigs invasion, where American sponsored Cuban exiles attempted to invade the cutesy-pie island in the Caribbean and send Castro the way of Old Yella. There was a growing sense among western states that the hammer had begun to tap, and the sickle had started to sharpen its edges along the coasts of Latin America. Among the reds, there was a suffocating sense that JFK would I-N-VADE Cuba and put the kobwash on the Castro regime.
So, in the interests of civility and good manners, Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to secretly place strategic nuclear missiles in darling ‘lil Cuba. Rumours that the proposed missile bases were designed to resemble an upraised middle finger were unsubstantiated, but widely regarded as true by the author of this historically inaccurate fluff piece.
History, however, is bunk. As Salienteer Guy Armstrong has proven in this very column, history never repeats, which is more than we can say for communism. McCarthyism saw the usually sound and circumspect American political scene descend into ‘He said, She said’ chaos. Even now in the inclement economic climate, AKA the worst PR disaster capitalism has ever faced, the call of Right Wing America is that Barack Obama was a socialist commie who wants little more than to “spread the wealth around,” all nice and cosy like.
The situation is more intense eastward. Soviet Russia and Ivan Drago may no longer be the piston-punchin’ supernovas of red and mustard yellow they once were, but our fun-lovin’ friends in Asia are fightin’ the people’s fight. The Mad Mad Mad World of Kim Jong Il of North Korea was accurately dissected in the historical documentary Team America: World Police, while the behemoth of communistic ping-pong, China, found grounding in the period piece Digging to China, starring Kevin fucking Bacon, communism’s errand boy. This is no mere coincidence.
Discerning, critical readers of Salient, my opponent my have you believe I’ve predicated an entire argument on a series of tenuous pop cultural references, but look deep within your heart and then deep within my basement where I keep my collection of Kevin Bacon films on VHS. They’re down there; they’re alive; and so too is the revolution. You’ll need more than six degrees of separation to avoid it.
Rebuttal
Hey, thanks for the yawnfest, Captain Politics Major, but I think you’ll find that communism is very much alive. I cannot bring myself to articulate a rebuttal through any thing other than a slur of gang signs. I’m dropping more east sides than Dre. Heh. Smirk.
By Michael Oliver
Yeah it is, dick!
Hey Jean-Michel Olivier, I’ve got news for you. Communism is not just dead, it is really dead. Dead like Kevin Bacon’s acting career. Communism is like the hobo you find in the park and you poke with a stick to see whether it is alive. But because of the decomposition process it lets out what sounds like a giant fart and you giggle. Oh how you giggle until you realise that it is actually a dead body that you took to show and tell.
The former premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, lamented in a book that communism was dead—except in universities. I posit that even in universities the proverbial shotgun has been placed into the mouth of communism and the Hemmingway Splatter is the writing on the wall that displays the truth for all Wikipedia readers to see.
What was Communism?
For several hours true communism was alive. That brief moment happened in early 1848. Karl Marx (generally regarded as the father of Communism), had been having a dirty tryst on the side with some rent boy called Engels (generally regarded as the ‘mother’ of Communism). The beast that was borne out of the uterus of their minds savaged East End London from approximately 1 pm to 3.45 pm, until it was targeted by the Adam Smith Society’s (ASS) laser-guided surface-to-surface missiles.
The eulogy delivered by Marx at Communism’s funeral was published shortly thereafter.
What is a Communist?
Shortly after the burial, many people in London and Germany (Marx’s homeland) decided to devote their lives to living as Communism would have lived, had (s)he come of age—fast and recklessly. However none of them could ever reconcile the morass of complicated and often contradictory commandments that Marx lay down in his eulogy. So while there were communists, communism’s corpse lay somewhere at the bottom of the English Channel.
Ingenious scuba divers searched the seven seas until they found the bloated and barnacled corpse, whereupon they proceeded to skin the hide and make fashionable leather jackets which were then sold at a high mark-up in all the Italian fashion houses. In fact I think MJO is wearing one right now. Dick.
Basically, the point is: Communists are really bad Elvis impersonators wearing the skin of ‘The King’ singing his songs off key and out of time. They never were and will never be ‘The King’.
Did it ever really live?
One of the core tenants of science is repetition and experiment. Scientists such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and more recently Castro, have all tried to resurrect Communism under different lab conditions. Generally this procedure uses DNA sourced from the once living cells of their jackets, combining it with frog DNA and chanting incantations like:
“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…”
We all know what happened to that guy. None of these have ever worked, and in fact the experiments have proven downright lethal. No fewer than 110 million people have died in the course of trying to patch this bitch up. Although this is disheartening to the Communists, they keep trying in secluded laboratories with lax occupational health and safety regulations.
Dead, or just barely alive?
Remember that dude in Grey’s Anatomy, Denny? The one who they keep conjuring up so Izzy can have sex with him? Denny is metaphor for the state of communism. He is dead. But he lives on in the mind of an obviously crazy character. In fact there is a certain irony in all this because Izzy was the one who cut the LVAD cable which lead to his death.
The vanguard of the proletariat were actually the ones who killed the revolution. With the rise of a left-wing society in which capitalism—in terms of gross inequality—has been tamed, workers have more rights than ever, and the agitation for fairer systems by commies and their ilk have smothered any communist tendencies under a blanket of sweet apathy and aardvarks.
Communism R.I.P.
And communism said? … Nothing,you idiots, communism’s dead. It’s locked in my basement.
Rebuttal
Kevin Bacon’s acting career died with JFK and in a similar fashion.
Guy Armstrong is dead.
Barack Obama is dead.
VHS is dead.
I never forgot about Dre.
I quit.
By Jackson Wood