With Bernie rising, it’s time to bring back Reagan’s Soviet jokes
Soviet humor has special significance given Bernie’s embrace of socialism and socialist tyrants — and it offers a fatalistic window into the reality of a Bernieconomy and your health under Berniecare.
Bernie is rising.
The mainstream media is all over the “Bernie can win” theme.
Bret Stephens writes in the NY Times, Of Course Bernie Can Win — To say Sanders is unelectable is indefensible. Harry Enten writes at CNN, Yes, Bernie Sanders can pull it off.
Bernie also is on the attack, with his campaign operatives badmouthing Elizabeth Warren barely below the surface while Bernie plays nice above surface.
The conventional wisdom, including by Obama-land alums, is that Bernie is the candidate against whom Trump most wants to run.
“If I were a campaign manager for Donald Trump and I look at the field, I would very much want to run against Bernie Sanders,” [Jim] Messina said. “I think the contrast is the best. He can say, ‘I’m a business guy, the economy’s good and this guy’s a socialist.’ I think that contrast for Trump is likely one that he’d be excited about in a way that he wouldn’t be as excited about Biden or potentially Mayor Pete or some of the more Midwestern moderate candidates.”
Regardless of prospects, I wrote not long ago that Bernie v. Trump is the battle we need, just as Britain needed Corbyn v. Johnson.
There will be plenty of time for pointing out what a total disaster Bernie would be to our economy and foreign policy. But I’m not sure that alone is how you beat Bernie — there is an even more powerful tool: Mockery of what Bernie’s America would look like if he were able to implement his policies.
Nothing is as powerful as humor. And nothing is as biting as Soviet humor, which has special significance given Bernie’s honeymoon in the Soviet Union and embrace of socialism and socialist tyrants. Soviet humor offers a fatalistic window into the reality of a Bernieconomy and your health under Berniecare.
I traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union during the cold war, from the “stans” to Soviet Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia and, of course, Moscow (where I studied) and Leningrad. I really appreciated the enduring wit and humor of average Soviets. The people I met were uniformly friendly and welcoming, despite their government, and I came to appreciate their endearing but fatalistic outlook and humor, a byproduct of Russian domination of the country.
Thinking about Bernie, I thought about how Ronald Reagan loved to tell Soviet jokes. Or at least jokes attributed to Soviets. Regardless of origin, they make very Soviet points.
So, here’s to you, Bernie (the first one is my favorite, and could just as easily be applied to your doctor under Berniecare):
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Ron Coleman
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Old Yakov Smirnoff joke about former Soviet Union:
Naïve U.S. college student visits USSR and asks RUssian citizen, “So how are things here in the Workers’ Paradise?”
Citizen: We can’t complain.
Student: Things are that good?
C: No, we can’t complain!
S: But I’ve read your constitution. It guarantees freedom of speech.
C: True, but is different here than in America.
S: How so?
C: In America you also have freedom AFTER speech!
(Something American Socialists and Dem Leftists [I repeat myself] are actively working to “fix”.)
Wendy’s – Soviet Fashion Show (1985, USA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpypTXccG2I
The guy playing the violin was a client of mine back in those days.
Who is the only Presidential Candidate to have honeymooned in the Soviet Union?
Bernie Sanders
{end of Soviet Union joke}
It’s a cold, blizzardy, winter night somewhere on the Volga. Old Ivan Ivanovich is lying shivering in bed, extremely ill. Suddenly, the door blows open. In strides a tall, skeletal figure clad in a long, black hooded robe. In one hand, it holds a scythe; in the other, an hourglass with the sand almost run out of the top globe.
“I am the Angel of Death!” Says the figure in a low, lugubrious, ominous tone.
“Thank goodness,” says Ivan Ivanovich. “For moment, thought it was secret police!”
Moshe Kaputski is crossing a wooden footbridge in the Birobidzhan Autonomous Oblast in winter. It gives way under him (even though he is a thin man, and the next thing he knows, he has broken through the ice covering a tributary of the Amur.
“Help! I’ll drown and freeze!” Mose cries.
To policemen pass by. “Aha!” they say, “Drown, Zhid!”
Desperate, Moshe thinks for a moment, and cries out, “Down with Brezhnev! Down with the Communist Party! Long live ZIonism!”
The two cops immediately jump in and pull him out to arrest him.
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