For all you communist party animals

Crazy but true fact number one: There are a couple of Catholic prayers with a stanza that goes “…and protect us from the evils of communism”. I know, not from research, but because I’ve read them at memorial prayer services for my grandmothers.

It sounds sort of quaint in these post-Berlin Wall days: “Lord, protect us from a bunch of cruddy pasted-together countries who couldn’t get their act together enough to put together a half-decent garage punk band, never mind stuff like concrete, a menu that wasn’t three-quarters cabbage, decent infrastructure or an economy. The only good things that came out of communism were getting some people to think about societal inequities (which could’ve been done without communism), some amusing graphic art, the early James Bond flicks and the fact that Yakov Smirnoff (“Eeen Soviet Russia, TV watches you!”) amused both George’s parents and mine.

(The rest of it was pure, unadulterated crap: ridiculous five-year plans which led to industries fudging numbers just they could look as though they were performing, assaults on freedom of speech, assembly and religion, military buildup at the expense of the people and worst of all, snotty liberal arts students during my time at Queen’s, breathing my oxygen and having to analyse every damned thing through a Marxist lens messin’ with my Zen — half of whom I’m sure are now paid to dream up new Tide-delivery systems for Procter and Gamble.)

Crazy but true fact number two: A number of people whom I consider good friends — and at least one “um friend” — were raised by communists. Poor sods. Raised on the Red Book, the Internationale and probably enough cabbage to keep a medium-sized city’s bowel movements regular, all of them have switched to materialism, becoming early adopters of high-tech gadgets and other de riguer “little luxuries”. All of them — save Cory, who had a “Road to Damascus” kind of experience at Disneyworld and has his head screwed on better than most people — are complete misery-seeking missiles. These are people that you couldn’t imagine inviting to a party — at least not one where you wanted people to have a good time — never mind actually throwing one.

Crazy but true fact number three: The American Communist Party expected its members to do just that back in the 1930’s, according to a party-throwing guide recently unearthed by a history prof at Brandeis University who was riffling through the campus’s collection of radical pamphlets.

Some excerpts from the New York Times piece on the pamphlet:

Among the suggested high jinks: cutting editorials from The Daily Worker into little pieces and having guests compete to see who can put them back together fastest; passing around pictures of party leaders and having guests try to name them correctly; holding a mock convention on, say, nonintervention in Spain. “One guest is made chairman. Another is Chamberlain, another Leon Blum, a third Mussolini,” the pamphlet cheerfully explains, adding, “A clever gathering can do wonders in political satire. It’s grand fun.”

Or why not try a round of anti-Fascist darts? “Buy darts from your stationer’s, sporting goods or department store,” the pamphlet instructs. “Draw a picture of Hitler, Mussolini, Hague or another Girdleresque pest. Put it on a piece of soft board with thumbtacks. Six throws for a nickel, and a prize if you paste Hague in the pants, or Trotsky in the eye.” (Mind you, all this doctrinaire diversion is to be had on the cheap: the pamphlet recommends conserving beer by pouring into the middle of the glass, a method that “gives more foam and less liquid — stretches each barrel further.”)

In other words: Heavy-handed didactic, da! Actual fun, nyet!