COMMUNISM

CALEB MAUPIN—In this episode Caleb discusses the importance of understanding the truths underscored by Dialectical Materialism, among which the fact that everything changes all the time, that NOTHING stays the same, not even from one second to the next, is central.  This means anything is possible, that the past, even the immediate past, does not need to rigidly determine the future. That A ≠ A. The chat also dwells on how people’s “high” events, highly romantic things they participated in—Vietnam war, the Great Depression,  the McCarthy period and the fight against anti-communism—seem to freeze their perception of what is possible, providing them with a single lens to view history.

CASS DEAN—Comes the Revolution, the displaced ruling class immediately starts organizing a counter-coup and lots of unpleasantness ensues, including mistrust between people. But Cuba’s ruling class, and its psycho sadist enforcers, were intertwined with both the leading civil criminals, the Mafia, the leading underground criminals, the CIA, and the politicians, of a large country only 90 miles away that rolled out the welcome mat.

Parenti smashes rightwing and establishment ideologies.

ERIC SCHECHTER—Regulations can’t make a kinder, gentler guillotine. The problem is not good institutions run badly, but bad institutions, founded on bad principles. We can’t end ecocide, poverty, war, and other problems until we replace our society’s real principles — hierarchy, property, and separateness — with a better Foundation: harmony and consensus. It’s a fool’s errand to try to make the lies of freedom and democracy come true, for those “principles” can’t really work.

RON RIDENOUR—“As the cold war reached freezing point, the USA and the Soviet Union entered the space race both hoping to be the first nation to conquer space. In 1957 the Soviets, led by the extraordinarily talented rocket scientist Korolyev, launched the first manmade satellite (sputnik) into orbit. This was soon followed by the first animal in orbit with Laika the dog. Laika sadly never returned to earth but in 1960 the heroic dogs Belka and Strelka successfully orbited the earth for a day and returned safely, laying the final grounds for the first human space flight” wrote Louise Whitworth.