Deviationisms

     The signs of the Left’s descent into totalitarian lunacy continue to accumulate:

• Pete Buttigieg has apologized for saying, a few years back, that “all lives matter.”
• Robert “Beto” O’Rourke has endorsed reparations for slavery.
• Bernie Sanders has sidled up to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal.”
• Joe Biden has made a fatuous attempt to gain absolution from the #MeToo crowd.
• All the declared Presidential candidates are striving to gain the approval of murderous racialist huckster Al Sharpton.

     Whoever has decreed the new, Communist-inspired Democrat Party Line is apparently tightening his, or their, grip upon those with aspirations to higher things. But that’s only what totalitarians do. No one is permitted to dissent, for dissent involves questions and doubts of those who have decided what the Party’s ideology shall be.

     Lev Bronstein a.k.a. Leon Trotsky could tell you what the Party does to deviationists.

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     The best understood ideological totalitarianism of recent years is, of course, Communism. While Communism has varied somewhat in its instantiations, its core features, most definitely including intolerance toward dissenters, have been constant over all of them. The hatred of the divergent figure has permeated every aspect of life under that system.

     Reuben Fine, an American chess grandmaster who once contended for the world championship, told an interesting tale about Soviet attitudes toward deviation during the Stalin years:

     The Soviet players had a rather uniform style, based primarily on tactical surprises. Their knowledge of the openings was good but left much to be desired; however they had many variations almost unknown to the West. Strategically they were frequently highly unsound.
     A rather amusing incident occurred with Belavienetz. I was asked to write a series of four articles for the Moscow paper Izvestia, and since it was necessary to be as noncontroversial as possible, I confined myself to chess. In the course of these articles, which described the games and the opponents, I commented that the style of Belavienetz was more solid and showed a sounder strategical base than that of the other masters. Instead of showing pleasure at these compliments, he wrote an indignant letter denying all my statements and affirming that his style was in no way different from anybody else’s. Even on the chessboard, deviationism was considered highly dangerous.

     Given what we’ve learned about Stalin’s tenure over the Soviet Union, this is utterly plausible. If the rigidity of ideological control extended to the chessboard, we need not imagine that it was relaxed in any other sphere of Soviet life. It is from the Soviet model that the masters of the Democrat Party have taken their lead. They who hold the purse strings are unanimous about it.

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     It hardly matters who might be the “gray eminences” that have decreed the Democrats’ new Party Line. It’s plain that anyone who hopes to gain national recognition is expected to toe it in all particulars. The homogenization thus produced is sufficient for any dispassionate observer to conclude that there will be no surprises in the later phase of the presidential campaign for anyone who’s watched the earlier one. No surprises as regards platform and policy, that is; the usual dirty dealings regarding excavations for and disclosures of personal peccadilloes are surely coming down the pike. But there will be no measurable differences among the policy prescriptions or the priority schemes of the Democrat contenders. How, then, will left-leaning voters choose among them?

     In all probability that, too, will be dictated from On High. The Left’s strategists and kingmakers will assess, by whatever means are available, who has the best chance of unseating President Trump. When they’ve reached a selection, The Word will go out. Regional commanders will be expected to promulgate it to the local activists and ward bosses beneath them. Those unworthies will relay it to the commercials makers, the brochure printers, and the street troops. When all are, as the saying goes, on the same page, the final assault on the electorate will commence.

     Deviationists there may be, but their co-partisans will treat them harshly, like unto the relentless demonization they have awarded to the supporters of President Trump. A few of those who aren’t cowed or silenced by it might “cross the aisle.” However, this is problematic for most Leftists; they regard their politics as a sacred commitment, an investment in their sense of moral superiority to us in the Right.

     The others will march in lockstep toward the abyss, singing uniformly from a single songbook, and keeping time to a single drummer. How many will halt before plunging over the lip remains to be seen. Present trends continuing, the number might be zero, for the reason given in the paragraph above.

     There will be blood. There will also be laughter, raucous and cruel. Stay tuned.