Marxism by Any Other Name
©2021 by Vernon Miles Kerr, VernonMilesKerr.com
Originally posted to Twitter as a rough draft August 9, 2021
A couple of our family members are big FoxNews fans so I have to sit through a lot of Fox’s bovine excrement. Today I had to endure an interview with a nauseatingly smug Mark R. Levin waxing effusive about his new book: American Marxism.
“It sold 400,000 copies in the first few days, now it’s over a half-million.” This said, as he tried but failed to conceal his glee by a sort of feigned casualness. Then he went about defining the problem his book addresses by singling out a very extreme, and minor, left-end of the progressive movement and presenting it as a Nuevo-RedScare Monster. I was hoping the book’s summary would show he took a more balanced approach…but no. (see the link below)
His approach smacks so much of the McCarthy era, which was empowered by the same kind of rhetoric as the Nazi era, just dressed up in Red-White-and-Blue. It’s the same old tired formula, “Build a simple-to understand straw man and recruit the simple-minded to knock it down.” What America needs is not Marxism nor pure Conservatism — both have been tried with disastrous results. We don’t need to adapt economic and social theories from Germany or England. We need our OWN socially responsible hybrid of the best of Liberal and Conservative thought.
If the Progressive movement could quit bickering, and some of its leaders could quit maneuvering for the spotlight, we could create that. Maybe then guys like “LeVIN” not “LEVin”as he meticulously pointed out, would quit conflating Progressivism with European Marxism and calling it “American Marxism.”
Read the summary here:
https://www.audiobooksnow.com/audiobooks/american-marxism/5267210/
Vernon Miles Kerr 
You know, the Russians, many who lived in the former Soviet Union, know exactly what’s happening in America. Many probably wonder what are we thinking allowing Marxism here. It’s like, some might think, that we love giving our freedoms away, or we’re just plain stup#d.
LikeLike
Limbaugh had a kind of brilliance, despite his many oversimplifications, and he had a sense of humor, which Levin has never been encumbered by. . . Limbaugh also had a keen eye for the cultural follies of the Left, and while he oversimplified enormously, he was a quick-witted and attractive personality, with an undeniable appeal.
As for Hannity, he strikes me as being, to put it mildly, not “the sharpest tack in the box”; he thinks he has made his point if he has repeated it twenty or thirty times. I find him tedious to listen to.
So why do I listen to these guys from time to time? — Because they show us what the Right despises in the Left.
LikeLike
Not a bad reason to suffer for awhile, I’d say.
LikeLike
I have heard Mark Levin any number of times on the radio, and I have to say he’s an odd mix of intelligence and folly. He’s obviously bright and knowledgeable and probably is a pretty good lawyer. But while he thinks he’s rational, he actually operates mainly on the emotional level. If he doesn’t like something or someone, he yells and screams, all the while thinking he’s the voice of purest reason. His books sell well, but I doubt that they’re read with much enthusiasm. Anything he doesn’t like he calls “Marxist.” Societal problems he doesn’t care about he either ignores or name-calls out of existence. For instance, the wealth gap in the country is no problem: anyone who tries to do something about it Levin will say is into “wealth redistribution” and a “communist.”
LikeLike
Thanks for your input. I’m glad to hear that my one an only impression of him was probably correct. He’s another mystery like Limbaugh was. Why was Limbaugh such an icon? Because he put things in simple black & white terms that any idiot can latch onto? He over-simplified politics, in my option, talking down to his audience without them even realizing it. Levin is on the same path; probably by design.
LikeLike