Political funny pictures thread, part V *** If I don't laugh, I'll cry***

[nonobaddog]

Not sure but I don't think you are supposed to suck on your mask.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Not sure but I don't think you are supposed to suck on your mask.

Maybe it's holding her lower plate in place. Her Fixodent must have failed.

 

[Hatin Since 87]

Not sure but I don't think you are supposed to suck on your mask.

She’s not wearing the mask for coronavirus. She’s trying to hide the stench of alcohol.

 

[edwea]

Something tells me this one could operate neither hammer nor sickle...

 

[2A_Tom]

Looks ALIEN to me.

 

[Dimik]

Love all these funnies.
What vaguely bothers me is that people in the US imagine communism as some sort of hellscape resulting from 80 years of uninterrupted Democratic rule. I don't know the intricacies of NK, PRC, Cambodia, etc, but I do know quite a bit about the USSR. Yes, it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't a creepy weird fantasy people post pictures about or depict in movies.

 

[JettaKnight]

Love all these funnies.
What vaguely bothers me is that people in the US imagine communism as some sort of hellscape resulting from 80 years of uninterrupted Democratic rule. I don't know the intricacies of NK, PRC, Cambodia, etc, but I do know quite a bit about the USSR. Yes, it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't a creepy weird fantasy people post pictures about or depict in movies.

Tell that to the Estonians who tried to wave their own flag.

 

[snorko]

Love all these funnies.
What vaguely bothers me is that people in the US imagine communism as some sort of hellscape resulting from 80 years of uninterrupted Democratic rule. I don't know the intricacies of NK, PRC, Cambodia, etc, but I do know quite a bit about the USSR. Yes, it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't a creepy weird fantasy people post pictures about or depict in movies.

It was creepy, weird, and I would add cruel and appalling. Flying out of Moscow in the 1980s was the only time I ever experienced the entire plane bursting out in applause as soon as we felt the wheels leave the ground.

 

[2A_Tom]

Love all these funnies.
What vaguely bothers me is that people in the US imagine communism as some sort of hellscape resulting from 80 years of uninterrupted Democratic rule. I don't know the intricacies of NK, PRC, Cambodia, etc, but I do know quite a bit about the USSR. Yes, it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't a creepy weird fantasy people post pictures about or depict in movies.

Please tell us more. We're you a party member?

 

[printcraft]

Love all these funnies.
What vaguely bothers me is that people in the US imagine communism as some sort of hellscape resulting from 80 years of uninterrupted Democratic rule. I don't know the intricacies of NK, PRC, Cambodia, etc, but I do know quite a bit about the USSR. Yes, it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't a creepy weird fantasy people post pictures about or depict in movies.

So they didn't build walls to keep people from leaving and then kill them if they tried to? Weird.

 

[Alamo]

It was creepy, weird, and I would add cruel and appalling. Flying out of Moscow in the 1980s was the only time I ever experienced the entire plane bursting out in applause as soon as we felt the wheels leave the ground.

Yes, this. When the freed POWs left Vietnam on C-141s and were informed that they had just left N Vietnamese airspace, they burst into cheers and applause too, for pretty much the same reasons.

I had some interesting talks with former-enemy East German officers, and they had some very interesting insights, which I have mentioned elsewhere on this board, but worth repeating. One of their wives told me it was not so bad having a tiny hole in the wall apartment for them and their child (about like my dorm room in college) because if they got together in groups of more than four that Stasi would get suspicious and start spying on them, so they didn't have more than a couple guests over at one time. And she and her husband were communist party members.

At the end of my stay, on a Friday night, we went out to a local restaurant as a group, about half-a-dozen former DDR luftwaffe officers, their wives, and about four westerners. We ordered beers and food, talked, drank, had a good time. At 2100 the restaurant proprietor told us he was closing. We asked him why he was closing when he had a room full of paying customers (it was a small place and they were not getting many customers at all). He said he was closing because the previous regime mandated that restaurants close at 2100 and ... it did not occur to him to change. My west German friend told him the regime is gone, you need to start thinking like an entrepreneur, look after your customers. This was a big light bulb for him. So he said OK and we stayed until midnight, eating and drinking (and paying!).

The next Monday I was back at my home base when my German friend (a West German E-9 named Ebi) came running and said "You will not believe the phone call I just got. It was our friends in the east, and they were crying so hard I could not understand what they were saying at first. When I got them calmed down and asked why they were crying, they said 'Thank you for showing us how free people live.'" Ebi was confused by this and asked them what they meant. Turns out they meant the Friday night outing we had. They had all grown up in communist East Germany, were now in the 30s, and had never socialized like that Friday night. Then we remembered what they told us about never meeting in groups larger than 4 because of the Stasi.

THAT's socialist utopia as it works out in real life. It's why the same guys, the former east german defenders of the State and Communist Party members, were shocked when I told them there was a communist party in the United States. It's also why they told me very emphatically we should round up all the communists in the US and kill them.

Yes communism/socialism is creepy and weird and vile.

 

[actaeon277]

Notice the subpar mask placement

 

[Dimik]

Please tell us more. We're you a party member?

I don't know what that means.

Listen, I'm not denying that it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't this "everything is outlawed". For goodness sake, it was easier to get a gun than it is now. Housing was essentially free. Employment was mandatory (no, not in a GULAG) and there was always a place to work. Why do you think so many people think of USSR as a better country than present day Russia/Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan etc is? Would I want to live there? Of course not. But fantasizing about it in terms of doom and gloom is blatantly false. Exactly like looking at Minneapolis and projecting that on the entire country. It's just not true.
Also about Estonia, and the rest of Baltic states. They only existed because the rest of the union basically fed and clothed them. Much like they do now - by collecting subsidies from the EU. They are not viable states for many reasons.

 

[Dimik]

Yes, this. When the freed POWs left Vietnam on C-141s and were informed that they had just left N Vietnamese airspace, they burst into cheers and applause too, for pretty much the same reasons.

I had some interesting talks with former-enemy East German officers, and they had some very interesting insights, which I have mentioned elsewhere on this board, but worth repeating. One of their wives told me it was not so bad having a tiny hole in the wall apartment for them and their child (about like my dorm room in college) because if they got together in groups of more than four that Stasi would get suspicious and start spying on them, so they didn't have more than a couple guests over at one time. And she and her husband were communist party members.

At the end of my stay, on a Friday night, we went out to a local restaurant as a group, about half-a-dozen former DDR luftwaffe officers, their wives, and about four westerners. We ordered beers and food, talked, drank, had a good time. At 2100 the restaurant proprietor told us he was closing. We asked him why he was closing when he had a room full of paying customers (it was a small place and they were not getting many customers at all). He said he was closing because the previous regime mandated that restaurants close at 2100 and ... it did not occur to him to change. My west German friend told him the regime is gone, you need to start thinking like an entrepreneur, look after your customers. This was a big light bulb for him. So he said OK and we stayed until midnight, eating and drinking (and paying!).

The next Monday I was back at my home base when my German friend (a West German E-9 named Ebi) came running and said "You will not believe the phone call I just got. It was our friends in the east, and they were crying so hard I could not understand what they were saying at first. When I got them calmed down and asked why they were crying, they said 'Thank you for showing us how free people live.'" Ebi was confused by this and asked them what they meant. Turns out they meant the Friday night outing we had. They had all grown up in communist East Germany, were now in the 30s, and had never socialized like that Friday night. Then we remembered what they told us about never meeting in groups larger than 4 because of the Stasi.

THAT's socialist utopia as it works out in real life. It's why the same guys, the former east german defenders of the State and Communist Party members, were shocked when I told them there was a communist party in the United States. It's also why they told me very emphatically we should round up all the communists in the US and kill them.

Yes communism/socialism is creepy and weird and vile.

I agree, socialism just doesn't work because the human nature is not compatible with it. It is a vile idea. But regardless of the system, it's never completely good or completely bad. The system is, after all, made up of people.

 

[printcraft]

I don't know what that means.

Listen, I'm not denying that it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't this "everything is outlawed". For goodness sake, it was easier to get a gun than it is now. Housing was essentially free. Employment was mandatory (no, not in a GULAG) and there was always a place to work. Why do you think so many people think of USSR as a better country than present day Russia/Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan etc is? Would I want to live there? Of course not. But fantasizing about it in terms of doom and gloom is blatantly false. Exactly like looking at Minneapolis and projecting that on the entire country. It's just not true.
Also about Estonia, and the rest of Baltic states. They only existed because the rest of the union basically fed and clothed them. Much like they do now - by collecting subsidies from the EU. They are not viable states for many reasons.

If they had only killed a few hundred million more it would have worked. They just didn't try hard enough.

 

[MCgrease08]

I don't know what that means.

Listen, I'm not denying that it wasn't a good system, but it wasn't this "everything is outlawed". For goodness sake, it was easier to get a gun than it is now. Housing was essentially free. Employment was mandatory (no, not in a GULAG) and there was always a place to work. Why do you think so many people think of USSR as a better country than present day Russia/Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan etc is? Would I want to live there? Of course not. But fantasizing about it in terms of doom and gloom is blatantly false. Exactly like looking at Minneapolis and projecting that on the entire country. It's just not true.
Also about Estonia, and the rest of Baltic states. They only existed because the rest of the union basically fed and clothed them. Much like they do now - by collecting subsidies from the EU. They are not viable states for many reasons.

I'd be very interested in any sources or citations to support this. I may be ignorant on the topic, but I don't recall hearing anything along these lines from folks who lived under socialism or communism.

ETA: I Forgot this was a pic thread.

 

[actaeon277]

 

[JettaKnight]

I'd be very interested in any sources or citations to support this. I may be ignorant on the topic, but I don't recall hearing anything along these lines from folks who lived under socialism or communism.

You got a place to live and a job... it probably sucked and you couldn't change it.
There was list to get on for a car - your name might come up before you die.


Now let's talk about supermarkets and the selection of ice cream...

 

[2A_Tom]

Nancy says you can get that mail order even during the siege.

 

[Dimik]

I'd be very interested in any sources or citations to support this. I may be ignorant on the topic, but I don't recall hearing anything along these lines from folks who lived under socialism or communism.

ETA: I Forgot this was a pic thread.

You have to understand that people who left USSR or post-Soviet space right after the collapse, have a tendency to view it in very negative tones. Not unjustifiably so, of course, but they tend to gloss over the good parts.
Yes, housing was essentially free. The government was constantly building apartment buildings and the apartments were assigned to people. That's why it was not uncommon to have a high-up party functionary living next door to a school teacher or a plumber. That was a normal state of affairs. Those buildings still exist. In fact, the ones built under Stalin are now considered as luxury prime real estate and cost millions of dollars after they got privatized in the 90s. People still think it's ridiculous that you have to pay rent or that the government doesn't clean your buildings or paint your fences. Really.
Mandatory employment was a thing as well. It was illegal to be unemployed. There was a section in your passport or other ID that stated where you were currently employed. If you were not, the police (militia) would literally come knocking on the door. If you persisted being unemployed, they would literally force you to work at a local factory or something. USSR was a very heavily industrialized entity, much like the Rust Belt used to be. And it suffered the same fate as the Rust Belt after the collapse.
Medicine was (and still is) basically free. As much as conservatives here (of whom I am a part for sure) hate this fact, but yes it was. And it worked. And it was of good quality. They even managed to develop pharmaceuticals, which they can't do now. Again, all part of government regulation. The problem with it is not that everything goes to crap, but that everything is very limited and slow in regard to development.
Same thing with the economy. There was an economic boom where salaries basically doubled in the 70s under Brezhnev. Of course the guy really responsible for it... gosh I forget the name, the minister of the economy or whatever the position was, achieved that by releasing the government control over manufacturing and allowing partial free market. The old party members didn't like that so the whole thing only lasted a few years and went back to stagnation after the guy was removed.
Education was really good, and also free. Both school and higher education. Since it was free, there was actually an incredible competition to get into colleges. The entrance examinations were very harsh. That's what progressives don't get, you can't have universal free education. Just doesn't work. Soviet politicians understood these things. As for highschools, soviet middle school special ed program was roughly what the current US honors highschool program is. Maybe harder, actually. For example - while USSR had universal literacy, the US had to drop literacy requirements for joining the military during WWII. Just food for thought.
Essentially, USSR was a giant welfare state, but not in a modern american sense of it. Basically the government controlled most parts of your professional life, but it basically covered all your needs. Yes everything was taken care of for you, but you couldn't just lie on the couch and fantasize about art and smoke weed, like our domestic progressives imagine. You had to work. People who didn't work were outcasts of the system who'd either be forced to get a job, or would go to prison and work there. No unemployment or welfare for people who don't work. Yes there was mass incarceration early on because you had to force people to accept the system as well as to build all the industry. Essentially mass slave labor force. But the longer it went, the less of it there was. Of course such a system can't last, and it didn't. Am I saying Stalin was a good guy? Of course not. But you can't deny his historic role and that he took a bankrupt agrarian country and turned it into an industrial and nuclear super power. Do I agree with his means? Come on, who would? Never mind, there are actually millions of people who do, but I'm not one of them. But it's just not right to deny the objective reality. How do you think a country could survive this long if it was this hell on Earth? Things don't work like that. But a lot of people in the post-Soviet space look back with fondness at that time. That's just the reality of it. And they do have things to miss. Also makes it easier to understand why they view capitalism in such negative colors. To them it represents the crime and lawlessness of the 90s and early 2000s because if Russia is good at anything, it's at screwing up reforms.
I'm only arguing for objectivity. It's not right to say USSR was hell on earth. Just like it's not right to say the US is a horrible country to live in.