On Facebook, I just saw a link to a talk by LTG (ret) Boykin titled "Marxism in America."
I'd have to get my husband to listen to the piece for perspective from someone else who was also trained to spot subversive activities (my husband's Army job as both a soldier and civilian for a good 25 years during the Cold War and directly after), but the comparison of the bailouts (the ones begun by Pres. Bush) to Marxist nationalization strikes me as a bit much. Marxist nationalization in a totalitarian society is different from a representative government using our collective strength through taxpayer funding to help out businesses to keep the economy from crashing. Are our politicians perfect? No. Oh, my goodness, no. But (so far) I haven't seen the kind of control in the United States that was visible from the West side of the line of fences, guard towers, attack dogs and minefields visible in East Germany.
November, 1978, East German border guard tower near Fulda, Germany -- must have been freezing in that cement tower with open windows watching for stray gawkers from the West. I know I was cold when I took the picture, and he must have been glad of, finally!, something to do.
Some may say that invoking the East German death strips as an example is overstatement, but if that is the case, then so is Gen. Boykin's use of Hitler.
I'm far from an expert on economic ebbs and flows, but I've seen reputable articles describing the number of jobs that continue to be jobs and not markers of now-homeless families, thanks to money propping up businesses. I realize this is debatable -- those statistical hairs can be split any number of ways -- but the economy is slowly recovering, and some of the funds spent on the recovery have been repaid.
As far as the health care legislation paragraphs mentioned in the talk, I vaguely remember looking up the bit on the "commissioning of officers to work for the president" when the legislation was being debated. From what I remember (a quick search doesn't bring up any references), that was about existing protocols for how to react in a health emergency. IF some kind of dire health emergency affecting American cities or regions were to happen, someone might need to direct operations from outside the area. IF that happened, a plan needs to be in place for such an event: think Katrina. If you need a refresher, click on the Katrina link in the left-hand sidebar.
Another thing to check (what I've heard so far) of this talk is the Snopes conclusion on the UN Small Arms Treaty.
Interested readers might also want to check on Gen. Boykin's activities as well. He is no stranger to controversy.
(page 2 of this article)
And yes, I've watched the shift from a pluralistic 'separation of church and state' military when draftees more-or-less-across-the-American-spectrum were a part of the mix (to include my husband) to ... a less-pluralistic group of all-volunteers inclined towards a certain outlook. I don't mean to impugn contemporary servicemembers, and yes we face serious threats -- "king of the hill" is a very old game -- but from what I've seen from a retiree-point-of-view from the Web, things certainly aren't the way they were when the Greatest Generation was in uniform, or when their kids were.
General Boykin has his own biases.
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