Boris Bazhanov was a good Communist.
Like many young people in the early 1900s who came from a prominent Russian family (his father was a successful physician), Boris developed a sense of guilt… almost remorse for the ‘privilege’ that he had enjoyed in his youth.
He was 16 when the revolution took hold in Russia in 1917, at which point he became completely radicalized to the Communist movement and its promise of equality for all.
His energy and dedication led him to rocket through the ranks of the Communist Party until, at just 23 years of age, he became personal assistant to none other than Joseph Stalin.
Boris spent years shadowing Stalin. He was practically in every room, every meeting… privy to every decision and conversation.
And it didn’t take long for Boris to finally learn that “equality” under Communism actually meant that the vast majority of people were “equal” in their poverty and misery… while party bosses like Stalin lived lives of fantastic wealth, power, and privilege.
After watching the brutal suppression of popular dissent, petty power struggles from within the party, murder, poisoning, intrigue, assassination, political persecution, and the general impoverishment of his country, Boris had finally had enough.
So, on New Year’s Eve in the year 1927, he used his position and influence to travel to the city of Ashgabat in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkmen— supposedly on official business.
Boris reportedly brought a treasure trove of secret Kremlin documents with him… then quietly slipped across the nearby border into Iran as the clock struck midnight into 1928.
From there, he made his way to British-controlled India where he received help to make his way to Europe, and then he eventually settled in France (only to become a KGB target for the rest of his life).
Boris was an ardent anti-communist for the rest of his life, and he eventually published a book which exposed the corruption and incompetence of the Communists in the Soviet politburo.
In one passage in his book, Boris wrote about a meeting with Stalin in which the dictator remarked, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”
This quote is sometimes miswritten as “it is not he who votes that counts, but he who counts the votes.”
Or perhaps better put in California, “it is not they/them who votes that counts, but they/them who counts the votes.”
Sometimes this quote is the only way my brain can explain certain election outcomes to itself.
For example– like many people, I was astonished that Spencer Pratt did not completely dominate yesterday’s LA mayoral race with 99.9999% of the vote.
Pratt’s entire platform is based on a promise to enforce the law in order to make LA safer for children. This is literally the most sane and reasonable promise a candidate could make.
Yet multiple whack job celebrities denounced him as a “MAGA FASCIST” while “journalists” whined that he constitutes a threat to democracy.
His opponent, incumbent mayor Karen Bass, believes that taxpayers should pay for new teeth for the city’s homeless meth addicts, while the even more loony candidate Nithya Raman complains that Mayor Bass isn’t socialist enough.
Sure, there will always be some lunatics who go in for that sort of policy: f**k the kids, let’s get them meth addicts new teeth!
Perhaps there are still others who haven’t noticed $6+ gas prices, or the obvious decline in the local economy or quality of basic services.
But are the majority of voters (the roughly 70% who voted for Bass, Raman, etc.) that suicidal to want more destruction?
Perhaps. But one thing I find noteworthy is that six different states held primary elections yesterday—California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota.
Yet at the time of this writing (around 9am central time on Wednesday morning), FIVE of those six states have counted nearly all of their votes. Iowa is at 99%. New Mexico is at 97%. Even New Jersey is at 95%.
But California, whose elected leaders shriek more about ‘threats to democracy’ than just about everyone else, are still sitting at just 58% of votes counted.
They love democracy… they just can’t seem to do the very thing that democracy depends on, i.e. count the votes. Or at least count the votes that living, breathing, verified US citizens actually fill out.
