My first visit to a Communist country was in 1962 when I drove through a small part of East Germany to get to Berlin, and then when I later crossed Checkpoint Charlie to visit East Berlin. I will admit that East and West Berlin were very different. East Berlin was quieter, and more monumental. But the people I saw on the street, going about their business, looked fine. They looked like normal people. I did see police or military presence, but this was less than a year after the Berlin Wall had been built, and I knew everyone was somewhat on edge.

One of the things that struck me as a 30 year old visiting the Soviet Union in 1972 again was how normal life seemed, even more quotidian than East Berlin ten years earlier. Admittedly, I did not see the squalid living conditions under which many residents of the USSR were living, and obviously I didn’t visit the Gulag, but the shops and the subways and the restaurants and the theaters were all busy and filled with people who looked neither hungry or badly clothed.  Communist Russia looked different from capitalist America to a young tourist, but frankly, it looked okay.

My only other venture behind the Iran Curtain was a few years later when I visited Prague and Budapest. Budapest was filled with energy, attractive women, and excitement, communism be damned. Prague, still suffering from the Soviet invasion after Prague Spring, was moribund.

My point, I guess, is that not only that you can’t tell a book by its cover, but you judge a government by visiting a city. Life, everywhere, just goes on.

So, as the United States is (temporarily?) changing into a more totalitarian country, we (that is, most of us) may not see a difference in our daily life or activities.

But some people, and probably a lot of people, will.

American Blacks tell of experiences of being picked on by law authorities in ways that Whites are not, sometimes with fatal conseequences. This was one of the major problems which led to the Civil Rights movement, and then to affirmative action programs, and then to the DEI movement.

Now, those programs are gone, not because they have been so successful that they are no longer needed, but because we now have a presidential administration which wants to treat everyone in the country, other than their perceived BFFs, as Blacks were treated before the Civil Rights movement. Everyone must remain in their assigned places, or you may find yourself detained, indicted, or deported. Don’t look askance, don’t talk back. You are not respected for your individuality. You are a cog and a number. Yes, you are equal, under “the law”, but there are many more equal than you.

What is playing out in Los Angeles right now from the ICE raids to the military call-up is outrageous, and it looks like just the beginning. The proposed military parade this weekend is an abomination, and will most likely lead to more unrest.

We of course have no idea where this is going. If we knew, would we be able to do anything about it?