14 thoughts on “Coarsely Eloquent”

1. Interesting thread, especially at the end when the putz who claims to have grown up in East Germany starts to argue with him. Can’t cure stupid or mendacious. I had a colleague from the old USSR. He was a doctor. In the early 80s he came to the US with his wife, infant daughter and about five bucks in his wallet. He told me a similar story. Hated the place. It’s not a picnic for a foreign MD, trying to get accredited to practice in the US, at least not back in those days. But he did it and thrived.

2. The troll who demanded names and dates is probably an expert because he once took a guided tour. Pretty Russian girls showed him all around the village ending in a feast of local delicacies while happy, smiling natives danced in colorful native garb. I’m pretty sure the name of the village was “Potemkin.”

3. And an insane amount of my idiotic generation wants to live under it because its more “fair” and “just” than our capitalist system. More and more Id like to figure out a way they could without ruining the rest of us lives so they can see how much it really sucks first hand. If I wasnt a (admittedly somewhat ruthless) capitalist I would not be anywhere close to where I am today.

4. POD
   “Id like to figure out a way they could ”
   they can – its called Venezuela. I hear they have a very generous immigration policy and “open borders”!

5. MacArthur, Id like to maybe split the US in two because they are pulling the classic “Its not real socialism in Venezuela, because they arent doing it the right way.” Seriously that is what they are saying now. You cant make it up.

6. Back in the early ’90s, our church sponsored a Russian family that had been allowed to leave the USSR, and were joining relatives who already lived in our town. The day after they arrived, I got to take the father and mother to Cub for the first time. We didn’t even make it through the produce section before they both began weeping.

   (A few years later I was back at the same Cub and ran into their teenage son who was working there.)

7. I think that I have mentioned this before, but in my IT sales days, I had some customers that came here from the USSR, became citizens and started their own business. Great people, but tough negotiators (😀)

   They have said that the idiots that embrace communism, all think that they will be Komissars, forgetting that someone will be assigned to empty bed pans.

8. I too was irritated by the troll/putz at first.

   But then, he provided no proof of his past in DDR and so could be called out for that and ignored.

   Moreover, the fact that some people didn’t experience the horrors, much less the difficulties of living in a Communist country like DDR, simply indicates to me that perhaps the putz/troll was the child of some big honcho in the DDR, like the son of a Stasi officer. He should be asked just as nicely to prove he wasn’t a Commie thug or parasite.

9. I was a teenager in the early 90s, living with my parents in Munich. We took a trip up through the former GDR one summer. Visited Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin. When we passed through the Brandenburg Gate, you could tell right away. The guy who claims he grew up in the GDR and provided pictures of the apartment buildings should have been challenged to provide photos of apartment buildings in East Berlin, particularly those close to the where the wall has been, and particularly the side of the buildings facing West Berlin. There were no windows on the upper floors. If life wasn’t so bad in East Berlin, why deprive citizens subjects of the view of the “decadent” West?

10. I’m insulted.

    I’ve expressed my disgust, and yes, hatred, for leftists for years. If not as eloquently, certainly every bit as coarsely…did it get me a feature on SITD? An interview? Attaboy?

    Nope.

    I don’t need to go to East Germany to see the heinous shit that happens under Commie control; I battled against government schools for years.

11. In the mid 80’s, I worked for RPC Industries. We built “industrial electron beam” machines.

    Almost all the engineers were Russian ex-pats, or escapees of Soviet sattellites. The thing I was most impressed with (besides their prodigious capacity for vodka) was their thirst for financial success.

    There was a guy from Hungary, I forget his name, who escaped by swimming a river. He had a job at a nuke power plant so he knew they’d never let him go. He said the only thing he took with him was his university records and diploma.

    The guy worked 24/7…He was a machine. I asked why he never took a break, or joined us after work for vodka, or beer.

    What he said always stuck with me.

    “I’ve wasted so many of my most productive years in Communist country, I have to make up the time while I can.”

    That’s communism.

12. Swiftee – yep. I always thought 360 Colborne looked vaguely East German.

13. Ian, similar here. I remember visiting East Berlin three months before the Wall fell, and what struck me most was that the food and drink there–in what was theoretically the showplace of East Germany–was just c**p. Chocolate wasn’t even conched to give it good texture, the “cola” I tried was to Sam’s what Sam’s is to Coca-Cola (really far worse), etc.. It’s just amazing how bad things can be when you don’t get rewarded for your work.

    Also agree with Swiftee about Russian immigrants. I’ve had the privilege of working with a bunch of Russian (Soviet) Jews who emigrated in the early 1980s, and have rarely if ever encountered smarter engineers. One interesting thing about those I’ve known is that they’d work hard as long as you treated them well, but they weren’t afraid to leave if you didn’t.

    Thank God they kept Checkpoint Charlie as a museum to that, and quite frankly, I just took a look at the old Alexanderplatz on Google maps. Still that same dismal Stalinist “architecture”, sad to say.

14. Mitch, 360 not only resembles a commie compound, its full of genuine commies.

    I remember you and I being at 360 to protest some outrage that has long since been topped & topped again, speaking with Tom Goldstein out front. He there in support of the aforementioned outrage, and was wearing, as I recall, a brown courderoy sport jacket with a red Communist star on the lapel.

    He was elected to the board some few years later…had the right stuff and all.

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