{"id":1311391,"date":"2019-06-13T20:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/a-comrade-by-any-other-name\/"},"modified":"2019-06-14T08:18:38","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T14:18:38","slug":"a-comrade-by-any-other-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/a-comrade-by-any-other-name\/","title":{"rendered":"A comrade by any other name"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As an occasional writer, I\u2019m sometimes asked, \u201cDo you mind if I change what you wrote?\u201d<\/p>\n

I answer, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

I normally care about the person asking, so I add, \u201cAs long as you make it better,\u201d not as an obligation, or even as a suggestion, but as an acknowledgement that improvement is always possible\u2014providing you understand what you\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n

A lot happened last week: Former Colorado governor and presidential hopeful John Hickenlooper threw socialism under the bus, the Washington Post published a George Will column on individualism, and the last \u201cChernobyl\u201d episode aired.<\/p>\n

As a backdrop, Chernobyl, a 5-episode HBO miniseries, portrayed what life around Pripyat, Ukraine must have been like just before and after the 1986 nuclear explosion.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good period piece, with fluorescent lighting, concrete block construction, and enough government cascade green to make everyone look ill.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some conjecture, mainly about how the RBMK reactor exploded, and some biological stretches, which make good drama, but there\u2019s some truth too, like the Soviet\u2019s slavish deference to the apparatus of state.<\/p>\n

A major theme is an observation about the former Soviet Union made by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: \u201cOne man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solzhenitsyn\u2019s was a hypothetical statement, of course. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, about Chernobyl few had quit lying, even those who knew the truth, in part or whole.<\/p>\n

In the USSR, truth was what the state said it was, and many forget truth had nothing to do with what you thought.<\/p>\n

Chernobyl\u2019s final episode aired June 3rd. It\u2019s worth streaming.<\/p>\n

Three days earlier, on May 31st, the Washington Post published an excerpt from a new book by George Will under the title \u201cIs the individual obsolete?\u201d<\/p>\n

In one passage, Will writes, \u201cThe more that individualism can be portrayed as a chimera, the more that any individual\u2019s achievements can be considered as derivative from society, the less the achievements warrant respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Empty individualism is one attribute that distinguished the former Soviet Union from America. You don\u2019t have to listen very long to Democrats to hear Soviet echoes.<\/p>\n

A familiar case Will points to is the \u201cyou didn\u2019t build that\u201d campaign. First uttered on a political stage by Elizabeth Warren, repeated by then-President Barack Obama, and dutifully replayed by our news media, it portrayed the individual as a manifestation of government.<\/p>\n

Why would you do this?<\/p>\n

Well, if your ideology values collectivism, the American individual needs toned down.<\/p>\n

A few days later, on June 2nd, John Hickenlooper said in a speech before the California Democrat Party convention, \u201cIf we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this, Hickenlooper got roundly booed.<\/p>\n

It was a risky bet, akin to pouring Trump bluster into the ears of California Democrats.<\/p>\n

Not a great idea (unless you\u2019re Trump).<\/p>\n

Strategically, there may have been no better way to pull a long-shot candidacy back from the brink of full-on campaign obscurity.<\/p>\n

But did Hickenlooper really mean it?<\/p>\n

Before his foray into Colorado politics, Hickenlooper was quite the entrepreneur. In 1988, he opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver\u2019s LoDo neighborhood. Some might argue Hickenlooper \u201cdidn\u2019t build\u201d Wynkoop, but no one can deny he sold it for a tidy profit.<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper\u2019s positioned himself to pick up centrists when Joe Biden gropes the wrong teenager or spikes another speech. And, there\u2019s ample time to tack left, which Hickenlooper will have to do to pick up Sanders\u2019 socialists.<\/p>\n

Yes, last week was a reflection of where we are on the political stage heading into the summer of 2019 \u2014 smack dab in the middle of Democrats trying to settle on the party\u2019s collective view of \u201cthe individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of their definitions stand a chance of improving the American idea, however, for few, if any, understand what we have.<\/p>\n

Mitch Mulhall is a husband, father and longtime Roaring Fork Valley resident. His column appears monthly in the Post Independent and at postindependent.com.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an occasional writer, I\u2019m sometimes asked, \u201cDo you mind if I change what you wrote?\u201d I answer, \u201cNo.\u201d I normally care about the person asking, so I add, \u201cAs long as you make it better,\u201d not as an obligation, or even as a suggestion, but as an acknowledgement that improvement is always possible\u2014providing you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 21:37:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311406,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311391\/revisions\/1311406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}