The Patriot Post® · A Teaching Moment

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/70384-a-teaching-moment-2020-05-11

If you’re searching for an upside to the shutdown, it should be that we all got a taste of Socialism with its inevitable shortages, rationing and loss of our constitutional freedoms.

We saw the government ordering companies to stop producing what they’re in business to produce and, instead, to start producing (masks, sanitizers, ventilators) whatever the government orders them to start manufacturing.

Unfortunately, it’s not likely to have the reaction it should have – a revulsion over the loss of liberty and our inalienable rights – on the young and stupid. That’s because Socialism sounds so nice. So far as Bernie Sanders’ supporters are concerned, it translates to free healthcare, free college and free money.

In addition, they have come to associate the word with things like social justice and social media, made available to them by billionaire commissars named Bezos, Zuckerberg and Bloomberg. They’re not too crazy about social-distancing, but as we saw on the beaches of Florida, they chose to ignore it.

If the youngsters had the sense they were allegedly born with, this would open their eyes and minds to the truth of what Socialism actually means.

Unfortunately, most of them had logic and commonsense sucked out of their skulls by the zombies who makes up the ranks of today’s schoolteachers, oafs who can rattle off twaddle about racism, the moral imperative of open borders and the inalienable right to abortions and to identify oneself, irrespective of biology, as man, woman or other.

They are the young louts who prayed that Bernie Sanders, a man who never worked a day in his life and yet owns three homes and has a million bucks in the bank, would be the next president. But as an expression of their tolerance, they are now willing to settle for the born-again Socialist, Joe Biden.


Like a stage magician who employs misdirection so you won’t notice his palming cards and coins, China is using the pandemic they created to promote its political agenda. They are cracking down on freedom-seeking dissidents in Hong Kong, expanding its military influence in the South China Sea and even sank a South Korean fishing boat in waters they insist they own.

It’s beginning to seem inevitable that China is looking to start a war. I assume that if the rumors of Kim Jong-un’s death are true, they will swoop in and annex North Korea just as they did Tibet.

China has already made major inroads in Africa and Latin America, mainly by extending credit to countries that have no way to pay the money back.

The best solution would be a revolution in China, but the leaders, thanks in good part to the technology provided by the traitors who infest the Silicon Valley, have pretty much ensured that it will be impossible for an uprising to get underway because of the 24/7 surveillance they maintain on the entire population.

Let us never forget that it was the team of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who invited Communist China into the world community. Even the two silly pigs who built their houses out of mud and straw weren’t stupid enough to roll out the red carpet for the ravenous wolf.


In response to the Coronavirus, Nancy Pelosi boasted “We are the captains of the ship. We’re the last to leave.”

If anything, Admiral Pelosi and the other rats in the House were the first to abandon the ship of state and are now the last to return.

Even with the Senate back in session, the House members are still collecting their checks while hunkered down at home.


When Hillary Clinton was giving her endorsement to Joe Biden, she claimed he is “the personification of hope, optimism and authenticity for this country.”

Authenticity? This is the same shmoe who in 1988 pretended to be the son of a Welsh coalminer when he appropriated in its entirety a speech by the head of England’s Labour Party, Neil Kinnock.


Back in 2004, people were suggesting that if flip-flopping was an Olympic event, John Kerry would bring home the gold. These days, he’d be given stiff competition by the World Health Organization. The WHO has changed its opinion when it comes to the potential number of fatalities, to the usefulness of masks and now even to the need for social distancing.

In case you missed the news in the midst of fascistic governors arbitrarily extending shutdowns, the WHO has now endorsed Sweden’s approach to the pandemic. Sweden didn’t close up any shops or restaurants, didn’t prevent people from hugging each other, didn’t curtail concerts, sporting events or church services. And they didn’t cost a single person his or her job or cause a meltdown of the nation’s economy.

In the end, their percentage of cases and deaths mirrored our own.


In response to Bret Baier’s invitation to supply questions for the two-hour Trump Townhall he and Martha McCallum were going to host, I submitted the following:

“Why haven’t such high-profile members of the Deep State as James Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan and Peter Strzok, been indicted? How are the American people expected to believe there isn’t a two-tier justice system when those four, along with Hillary Clinton, James Clapper, Michael Hayden and Lois Lerner, are still walking around free, while Trump supporters Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, have either gone to jail, are headed to jail or, at the very least, had their reputations and financial savings gutted by the Deep State?”


Is there any doubt that in December the cover of Time Magazine’s Man of the Year issue, or whatever they choose to call it, will be a picture of a coronavirus in living color? And that among the runners-up will be Anthony Fauci, who is beginning to look like a coronavirus.


I know that China uses bribery to win friends and influence people, whether those people work in the tech industry, academia, politics or the NBA, but it still astonishes me when I hear Americans take China’s side in disputes with the U.S.

But I suppose it’s no more amazing than when I hear left-wingers in this country and in Europe siding with the Arabs against Israel.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so shocked when people’s sense of morality is either up for sale or simply non-existent.


Among the rash of recent memes, my two favorites were these:

Q. What is anger? A: It is a punishment we give ourselves for somebody else’s mistakes.

In America, we call it lobbying. Everywhere else in the world, they call it bribery and corruption.


I have always been fascinated by the names that entertainers give themselves or have foisted on them by agents or studios.

Sometimes it makes sense, as when an Englishman born James Stewart decided he had better call himself Stewart Granger.

Sometimes, aesthetics is the determining factor, as it was for Emma Matzo who transformed herself into Lizabeth Scott.

But the most utilitarian change was the one that turned Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru into Herbert Lom, best known as the French commissioner of police Charles Dreyfus, who was inevitably turned into a twitching, quivering madman, thanks to the antics of his inept subordinate, Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers).