By Bela “Bill” Suhayda
Charles Coddington, in a recent contribution to his communist legacy here in The Voice, wrote if our government would’ve simply nationalized/confiscated U.S. oil companies… our government could have controlled the price of gasoline so the public wouldn’t have experienced high prices on fuel during this war.
Charles, didn’t you keep track of what happened when communist, Hugo Chavez, nationalized all of those oil companies in Venezuela? I’m guessing no. So here’s a reminder Mr. Historian.
Venezuela went from being one of the wealthiest nations in the world to one of the poorest. Yup! When communist governments nationalize the means of production for a nation, they create economic disaster resulting in massive poverty and food shortages. But those who do the confiscation don’t starve, because they own what is confiscated. When Chavez turned Venezuela communist, he created shortages of everything, including food, which lead to even zoo animals becoming a necessary source of nourishment for the people.
Coddington is an incredibly poor historian. He theorized my family members were Nazis only because I wrote the following sentence in an article: “We had to escape Hungary.” Yup! This sentence was all the evidence he needed to arrive at his conclusion.
Coddington keeps himself so uninformed, he doesn’t know people must escape communist countries. No one just leaves, Charles. If they could, there wouldn’t be anyone left for them to rule over. It’s because of check points on the way to the borders, snipers stationed on the borders, and land mines on the borders that keep people from attempting escape. Coddington believes Communist regimes are benevolent, kind, loving, governments. So he ignores the reality communism is responsible for the deaths of 100 million human beings in mass starvations, revolutions, Gulag’s, and disappearances during the 20th Century. Included in this statistic is my mom’s brother who’s sin was speaking his mind. It didn’t occur to spongy Coddington that Russian tanks were machine gunning and blowing up Budapest and other Hungarian cities during the 1956 Revolution as we (my family) were literally running for our lives. Thousands were murdered at the borders, in villages, and cities.
A personal story: I was all of seven years old helping my mom tend to a garden in front of my grandparents home when we heard canon fire coming from the direction of a small neighboring village, a few kilometers away. Later, I saw a Soviet tank in a blue diesel haze rumbling and squealing coming from that direction. The noises emanating from the huge menacing hulk became a deafening roar as it neared. People further up the road, closer to the oncoming threat, hurried to move indoors.
My mother stood from her gardening position, then turned to face the dirt road. Her expression was as grave as I’d ever seen it. She raised her fist into the air in contemp. The tank slowed then stopped directly in front of us. The turret of the metal hulk turned slowly until the cannon pointed straight at us. My mom took my shoulder and guided me behind her long billowy skirt in her feeble attempt to defend me from whatever might come next. My world was in dead silence with the exception of the sound of my mom’s trembling, breaths. She stood shaking, yet defiant. The tanks engine suddenly roared to life causing me to jump after what had seemed an eternity. Then, it moved slowly down the road. My mom sat down in the grass weeping, holding me close.
No Charles, we were not Nazis being hunted by communists as you suggested. We were a people being enslaved by communists. And I will do everything in my power to keep this country safe from your stupidity.