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One person's insight into the reasons for the "Walk Away" movement.
Years ago, we flew into Newark airport in New Jersey after almost three years living abroad as expats -- mostly in St. Petersburg, Russia. (I realize that in today’s McCarthyesque environment with Robert Mueller at the head of the new Unamerican Activities Committee, that experience could land me in solitary confinement), but back then it was an “emerging market” and we were explorers on that frontier. While it was a dark, cold, and lonely experience, it was one that I would do again in a heartbeat.
It was living amongst the Russians that I got a glimpse into their soul through what I saw as “schizophrenic” eyes -- starving for products, stocked store shelves, decent food, shoes that fit, and mostly, the freedom to come and go as they please, vote as they please, and express themselves as they please without the iron fist and heavy boot of the State; and thrilled that the Soviet Empire had collapsed.
I also had a front seat view of the vestiges of (Soviet) communism. Creativity and innovation, apart from needs dictated by the state and the innovation that required, had been stifled for so long that, that in some ways, it wasn’t part of their cultural fabric anymore. Comrades continued to accept the continued emptiness on store shelves. Many lacked the ingenuity and initiative required to take care of things that the omnipotent State usually took care of.
These observations played a huge role when I “walked away” from being a registered Democrat who reflexively voted without much thought. And it all came rushing in as we approached the landing strip at EWR. It was a clear day and I had a solid view of the city of Newark where my father was born. I thought about that city and the other municipalities of New Jersey and the many communities scattered across the fruited plains that were run by Democrats, had significant minority populations, and had been funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to fight Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty -- not to mention billions in charitable donations through a multitude or organizations that promised to do good -- and I realized something.
All that money accomplished very little because it really did just keep “the black man” in his place, in the ghetto, in underperforming schools, on the dole, on bread lines waiting for his handout from the master -- the Democratic Party. The Democrats would funnel as much money as they could to look as if they were helping people when they just continued to enslave them. Their policies didn’t help the majority of blacks in these communities; it just perpetuated the status quo, and actually things got worse as literacy rates declined, and single motherhood, the incarceration of young men, and drug trafficking and abuse, got worse.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/soviets_democrats_and_t...