Immersed In Red

by Mike Shotwell

  In order to realize their ideal, they had to deny what was plainly before their eyes. Richardson states, “For idealists, the physical world is either not real or is unimportant. It is only a stage to play out the pursuit of their ideal.” In Stalin’s case, the US would be the next venue for communist revolution. Orville and his friends bought into this idealism with their all, choosing their course of action as outlined by the Comintern rules and Moscow’s requirement for party membership. Nazi Germany endeavored to perfect their own ideal society; whatever force was required to achieve the ideal could not be condemned as improper; they were seeking a perfect world and who could argue with that? In Germany, the ideal of the superior Aryan race was used to carry out the plan for Hitler’s new perfect society. In Russia, similar to the Ayrian concept, the new archetypical ideal that would emerge from their society would be “The New Soviet Man.”

  Orville was always looking to this perfect world somewhere out in the either. In his interviews, he interjected a quote from Henry Steele Comager, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

  My mother and Orville shared the belief that Stalin would end the inequities of the world with the installation of communism worldwide. But there was an inherent problem in that belief; in order to realize the dream, one had to set aside the inevitable horror that would come to the non-believers. Anne Applebaum, in her book, Gulag, describes the various elements that characterized Lenin’s and Stalin’s blueprint for that dream: both leaders arbitrarily meted out death sentences; they aggresively disrupted an entire society’s set of values; demonized lifetime accumulations of wealth and experience as being a liability; glamorized robbery of individual property as “nationalization;” and viewed murder as an acceptable part of the struggle to attain the “dictatorship of the Proletariet.”

  History continually reminds us that the greatest attrocities in human history have been committed by totalitarian idealists and those seduced by that idealism. Orville was typical of the true believer, both downplaying the dark side of implementation, and even denying its existance, in order to remain focused on the ideal. But it nonetheless was there, lurking under the surface.

  Whittaker Chambers summed it up when he said, “What man can call himself a Communist who has not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of policy, right if the vision is right, justified by history?”

  It was no different in Germany, where the downtrodden citizenry reached out to Hitler to fix their broken world after WWI and create a new German ideal, a glorification of a history that never was, and a thousand year, world-wide Third Reich, filled with Aryan purity and a political system of socialism, an ideal that never had any chance of becoming a reality. The pursuit was costly; their cities were destroyed and their populations desimated, along with their dreams.

  Can any rational person come to the conclusion that the pursuit of idealistic societies has been worth the 75 million lives lost in WWII, or the accumulative 100 million, or more, lives lost in the twentieth century due to the madness of totalitarian communism?

  Anne Applebaum does a good job summarizing a simple answer to the riddle of why westerners like Orville and my mother could stomach such an abysmal ideology as Stalinist/Leninist communism:

  It is not only the far left, and not only the Western communists, who were tempted to make excuses for Stalin’s crimes that they would never have for Hitler’s. Communist ideals---social justice, equality for all---are simply far more attractive to most in the West than the Nazi advocacy of racism and the triumph of the strong over the weak. Even if communist ideology meant something very different in practice, it was harder for the intellectual descendants of the American and French revolutions to condemn a system which sounded, at least, similar to their own.

  Joseph Epstein coined the term virtucrat in a 2014 article which describes part of Orville’s sense of himself, stemming from his perceived lofty intellect. This was derived from the “virtuousness” of his Christlike political opinions, as shown in his turning to communism partly because of the biblical teachings of sharing and the words of Jesus. To him life was a Manichaean battle between good and evil, and communism would declare victory over this issue. He was on a biblical crusade to destroy evil, but sadly it required evil to do the job.

  My mother’s situation was somewhat different. She always dealt with life in generalities. Perhaps she didn’t completely understand the extreme level of hardcore communism in which Orville, Charlie Kramer, Sol Adler, Nat and Janet Ross, Harold and Faye Glasser, Johnnie Jacobson, Roger Rutchick, Beenie Baldwin and others were so deeply involved. But even if her involvement was conducted in the tangential role of a girlfriend, and later a wife, adhering to Orville’s doctinaire political direction, she still took an active stance in supporting the ideal. One telling example was changing her April 30 birth date to May 1st to coincide with the May Day celebrations of the communist revolution in Russia.

  From the earliest days of her relationship with Orville, after her divorce from my father, my mother was allowing clandestine meetings of communists in her home that she knew clearly were illegal and dangerous. She described how she offered her house to him for “a lot of secret meetings,” held with “important people.” She explained the advantage of the locale: “I was just Orville’s girlfriend, and I was single and had no attachments. Who would suspect me of being involved with any secretive activities?” Apparently not yet considered “in the fold,” she did not sit in on the discussions; she felt, at that time, that she “had nothing to offer,” Regardless, in her infinite naiveté, she didn’t think the FBI could find them. I mentioned that she had two children upstairs during these meetings (me and my brother) and there could have been a raid. In fact, I suggested that she and Orville could have been hauled away. She sloughed it off.

  It wasn’t in my mother’s makeup to see the big picture or even her own involvement on a day to day basis. When she was about eighty-nine years old and entering into her final six years with slowly increasing dementia, I interviewed her about various times in her life. While talking about Orville (a large and frequent topic), she said to me, with a slightly coy smile, “Do you think he was a communist?” She had never before raised the issue, but seemed willing to broach it now. I was surprised to hear it because for her, the issue of communist party membership was something whispered about but never voiced out in the open; more secrets even to the last. I said, “of course he was,” and we both laughed. I think there was some relief that the long-held secret was out, the secret that we had been instructed to never talk about.

  I went on to ask her if she thought the country would have been better off if Orville and his allies gained control. Her immediate answer was “no,” followed by the perplexing, “but they had a lot of good ideas, better than the other side. They were very bright and intellectual.” She reminded me of the ladies riding out in their surreys from Washington with picnic baskets and dressed in their finery, to view the grand Battle of Bull Run in 1861, at the start of the American Civil War. In the naiveté of the time, they were expecting an afternoon’s exciting performance, having no comprehension of the chaos and bloodshed that was to follow just a few hours later.

  What communism offered my mother and Orville, with its unrelenting discipline, was an ordered world that seemed to align the universe for them. It was also like a secret club of intellectual superiors, and even must have carried a level of intrinsic excitement. The way out of their discontent was strict political order and subsurviance to their unattainable ideal. As history has shown, the political path that they chose was badly flawed and unfortunately answered none of the fundamental problems and resentments accumulated during their lives.

  My mother’s world, post-Orville: My mother continued her involvement with liberal/leftist politics even after her divorce from Orville. She would march down to any street protest that took place on a given weekend. But there was never a well-defined discourse on the issues at hand. I only heard
the usual generalities about fighting for people’s rights, freedom for the oppressed, and the like.

  She claimed, as had Orville, that she read a “balanced press,” but it was difficult to see. Her daily ritual was to sit at her dining room table, sipping coffee until midday, and reading the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, both well known by the 70s and 80s for their left bias. Her one conservative publication, The Wall Street Journal, was only perused for stock information on the recommendation from one of her financial advisors. The opinion pages would never have been opened. She lived in affluent West Los Angeles, adjacent to the Mediterranean-style Shangri-La of Westwood Village, on a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard dubbed “The Gold Coast.” She fit right in, with resources resulting from her sporadic real-estate work, and her well-invested inheritance, which provided a very comfortable existence.

  I asked her once if the Russians and Joe Stalin had been successful in overthrowing the US government, did she ever consider that she might have been one of the first to be dragged out of her tasteful condominium and executed in the street; after all, the new communist government, as they did in Russia, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, would not look kindly upon her wealth. They would want to make room for other more deserving families. She dismissed the idea as ridiculous, and simply too absurd to contemplate.

  One of the most prized benefits of her comfortable economic situation was her ability to travel extensively, beginning in her fifties. She would rent out her condominium for three months at a time and head out on her own, with little in the way of an itinerary, and leaving only the occasional American Express address for receiving letters from home. While many of her trips were to known tourist destinations that were relatively safe, she also ventured into some pretty dicey areas, such as Afghanistan, and rural Morocco, where being a single female on her own was not the wisest choice; some of her tales were pretty hair-raising. My mother also travelled to her much-admired Russia, coming home and telling us about all the happy Russian people she encountered. In contrast, we had friends who travelled there with a theater troupe to put on performances of Fiddler on the Roof, staying with local families. Upon their departure, our friend gave his host a carton of cigarettes as a thank you. The man actually cried at receiving such a precious commodity. My brother Peter also made a trip to Russia, and encountered a population numbed by widespread alcoholism; people drowning their sorrows at the end of every day. A far different picture, and this from a strong-minded liberal.

  When my mother died in 2013, she had come to the end of a steady five-toten-year decline from dementia. During those last few years, she would repeatedly tell us that the best thing she had ever done was to “have my three sons.” She would go on to describe taking Peter and me all around on the streetcar for 10 cents, and having all sorts of fun. Her new “memories” were of a loving family, and a lovely experience as a mother. This was undoubtedly a comforting, but unfortunately false, narrative as those younger years were tumultuous.

  I became her conservator and guardian, relieving her of any daily responsibilities, and when I would visit her at her assisted-living facility she was actually affectionate with me, smiling and holding my hand when we walked; something she did not do when I was growing up. This was an unexpected benefit for me, allowing me to experience my mother with some warmth before the end of her life. In fact, I truly believe those last years turned out to be the happiest for her, with no cares about politics, no TV news, no protests to attend, and a release from persistent negativity.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 19

  FINAL THOUGHTS

  Some of the comments I have made about my mother, primarily in regard to her political perceptions and how they affected my life, might seem harsh, which I wish to temper with a bit of Christian charity, even though she would have brushed off the notion.

  On the positive side, due to her somewhat zany personality, we were exposed to places and events that a more normal upbringing might not have included, such as our extensive summer travels across the country following different routes each year. I never cared for sleeping in campgrounds, under picnic tables, or in cow pastures, but it was educational. Through all of her ups and downs, and her difficulties with the men she chose to be involved with, she persevered with her boys as best she could. Another person might have abandoned us or given up hope, but she dug in her heels and went forward. I am also grateful for her giving me life, although its course is far removed from the one she charted for herself.

  Some credit is also due Orville. Despite the unfair and unforgivable political indoctrination, he kept us sheltered and put bread on the table for the twelve years he and my mother were married, and that certainly must be recognized. His involvement with us through baseball created at least a bit of a bridge, and on weekends he was always willing to meet at the Little League field and work with us. I am thankful for those memories.

  Looking back, I realize that, for whatever reason, I had the ability to develop and benefit from close friendships and an active school/social life outside my home; those things allowed me to navigate through those early years. As an adult I made a priority of gaining balance, and pursuing the life I envisioned for myself. It wasn’t easy but I feel, after all, that I faired pretty coming from where I began, culminating in the forty wonderful years with my wife Gwyneth.

  I also feel like I have miraculously fallen into a divine gap measured in time and place. Simply due to the arbitrary year in which I was born, I didn’t have to face the bitter cold and death at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War, or the horrifying battlefields of the Civil War. I didn’t have to suffer gas attacks in France during WWI, or claw my way under fire up the slopes of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima; or desperately try to stay on my feet to avoid being bayoneted and discarded on the Bataan Death March. I didn’t have to be on a landing craft, storming the beaches of Normandy, with thousands falling all around me, fighting the Germans or the Japanese during WWII, nor did I have to be huddled in fear on Pork Chop Hill in Korea, or fighting in the jungles of Vietnam.

  For that matter, I also didn’t have the misfortune of living a life of suffering through the barbarism and hopelessness of the Mao and Stalinist regimes, or ending up in one of Hitler’s crematoriums at Treblinka. As a citizen of the United States I am eternally grateful to the men and women who did serve in the military, who have made, and are keeping, this country free and safe.

  The sense of security that young people have today is an incomparable blessing. But it is also a danger if it is coupled with the belief that this security will simply go on forever. Democracy is fragile and more difficult to achieve than other forms of government. There has never been another country like the United States. Representative democracy was a new idea forged by the founding fathers, and they knew perhaps better than most that it would be a constant struggle to maintain; they understood human nature. Socialist and communist governance can appear appealing in the beginning; a seemingly benevolent leader impresses with promises of taking care of everyone’s needs: “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs,” the slogan most closely associated with Karl Marx.

  On the face of it, it sounds so “reasonable.” But once human nature takes over, as it always will, and the people who are industrious begin to recognize that those considered “in need” wish to bear no responsibility for their own wellbeing, resentments begin to build and things get messy. Those without will seek “redress.” That’s when the true nature of a Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Mussolini, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung, Castro, Chavez, or a Peron, will appear, and the “utopia” will slowly transmogrify into a stifling, iron-handed totalitarian environment, often under military control. Winston Churchill said it well, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

  A moving example is The Forsaken, by Tim Tzouliadis, which recounts the experienc
e of thousands of Americans who immigrated to Russia during the 1930s, both to take part in Stalin’s five-year plan building towards a worker’s paradise, and to escape the Depression. This very readable, thoroughly referenced work clearly shows the transformation from the promised, wonderful-sounding utopia, to a nightmare that lasted well into the latter part of the twentieth century.

  What has gradually occurred in this country since the 1930s, and has gained momentum in the last two to three decades, is the persistent belief that America is somehow a heartless, mean and egotistical country, guilty of perpetrating “crimes against humanity” as one young lady, sitting next to me on an airplane stated. Ignored in this belief system is the reality that the US rebuilt Europe and Japan after the war, while continuing to expand our economic freedoms. The environment created has resulted in millions of people clamoring to come here to escape oppression in their countries of origin. Their desire is not to be taken care of by the government, but rather to have the opportunity to create a life using their abilities to the fullest. Having opportunity does not equate to a guaranteed outcome; life has no guarantees; but the freedom to pursue life on one’s own terms allows all kinds of possibilities.

  Perhaps my biggest regret is that I did not choose to share this part of my early life with my daughters, that I did not convey more about my unusual growing up years, rife with indoctrination, and my subsequent turning away from that ideology as a result of my varied life experiences.

  As described in my prologue, I might never have returned to those days had it not been for the rise of Barack Obama in 2008. As I saw and read about Obama’s mentors, I was very disturbed by what was reported. There was Black Liberation Theology reverend, Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for twenty years, seen in videos ranting “God damn America.” Black Liberation Theology is a Marxist-type movement whose precepts include a theology that “accepts only the love of God that participates in the destruction of the white enemy,” and that “the State of Israel is an illegal, genocidal … place.” Obama distanced himself from Wright when these things came out, and claimed that he had never heard such sermons. But who could believe this? Not only had the Obama’s been long-standing members, he and Michelle were married by the good reverend, who Obama thought of as an uncle.