Congrats to the gang at The People’s Cube, on…good Lord, has it really been fifteen years already?

Cough-cough, comrades!

As all progressive humanity celebrates the Glorious 15th Anniversary of The People’s Cube, we officially advise you to conduct spontaneous celebratory marches within at least six feet from one another in square formations. The Great Pandemic of International Coronavirus dictates that workers of the world must unite cautiously and without touching. Once having been united, don’t forget to sanitize your equipment, marching signs, and/or shovels. Beet vodka-based hand sanitizer will be provided behind Tractor Barn #2.

We can neither confirm nor deny that the ongoing global lockdown and universal self-isolation is the result of a conspiracy to usher the unwashed masses into the Glorious Progressive World of Next Tuesday. We can confirm, however, that the conspirators, who may or may not exist, have badly miscalculated and may have to face a very different outcome.

The unwashed masses will come out of this quarantine thoroughly washed, smelling of hand sanitizer, and with the realization that governments cannot be relied upon to protect and provide in a time of need, and that to be self-reliant is a better and safer way to go. With each passing moment, millions of idle minds around the world are getting infected with these and similar thoughtcrimes, which is worse than the very virus that had caused them to stay indoors and have idle thoughts.

The Cube—which I shamefacedly confess to not checking in on of late as regularly as I used to, and should be—is a fantastic site brimming over with hilarious articles, imagery, and sundry other madness. The joint is beautifully designed, the content a very deep well indeed. It was/is the brainchild of one Oleg Atbashian, an immigrant from Ukraine who is now an American citizen and in his younger days worked as a propaganda artist for the USSR. He explains:

Atbashian has an interesting story about how he came to be part of the Soviet propaganda machine – and eventually landed in the U.S. as a conservative activist.

“It sounds a little grander than it was. I was 23 years old. I wanted to be an artist and if I wasn’t an artist, then a member of the artist union,” Atbashian said “It was hard to get anywhere in that profession so the only outlet for people like me was to become a maker of visual motivational and agit-propaganda art that was in the street and in the interiors of companies.”

Atbashian compares the work he did to many billboards seen in the U.S. “They kind of brighten up the landscape especially around the cities and along the highways. In the Soviet Union we didn’t have any of that. We had motivational propaganda, so you would’ve seen a poster of a worker calling comrades to work in order to fulfill the five-year plan ahead of schedule to build Communism. Those were the only bright spots in the otherwise drab landscape. Everything else was dark and dated,” he said noting that most people would look at it as decorative art.

“Towards the end during the collapse of the USSR, most people didn’t believe in the propaganda. It was pretty cynical and everybody was making jokes about Communism,” he said.

Atbashian left Ukraine in 1994 explaining that while it was easier to leave the country after the collapse of the USSR, Western countries like the United States were not accepting many Ukranians.

“Getting a visa at the American embassy was more complicated than getting an exit passport and so I was luckier than others, but a large portion of people who applied for entry visas to the U.S. were not approved,” he said.

Well, see, US demand for Somali bigamists and other Islamonut ingrates was much higher, leaving little space to put intelligent, worthwhile human beings with something to contribute to society like yourself, Oleg. A couple of more-serious pearls of plainspoken wisdom from another interview with Atbashian:

The Leftists claim the moral high ground, but the morality is the only ground on which they can be defeated. We can attack the political figures all we want, but they will be replaced by different ones of exactly the same kind.

The reason why this socialist system is immoral is because equality can only be enforced one way (points down). You cannot elevate people to make them equal because people are all born different, but you can always bring them down to the lowest common denominator. That’s what they eventually wind up doing, regardless of their claims to the contrary.

Elsewhere, he deftly skewers liberal contradictions.

Years ago, living in America made me feel as though I had traveled in a time machine from the past. But after the recent “revolutionary” changes have turned reality on its head — which is what “revolution” literally means — I’m getting an uneasy feeling I had come from your future.

As your comrade from the future, I also feel a social obligation to help my less advanced comrades in the American community, and prepare them for the transition to the glorious world of underground literature, half-whispered jokes, and the useful habit of looking over your shoulder. Don’t become a nation of cowards — but watch who might be listening.

Let’s start with these few.

People’s power:
• Liberals believe they’re advancing people’s power — yet they don’t believe people can do anything right without their guidance.
• People can’t do anything right — yet the government bureaucracy can do everything.
• The government bureaucracy can do everything — yet liberals don’t like it when the government takes control of their lives.
• Liberals don’t like it when the government takes control of their lives — yet they vote for programs that increase people’s dependency on the government.
• They vote for programs that increase people’s dependency on the government — yet they believe they’re advancing people’s power.

Public education:
• Liberals have been in charge of education for 50 years — yet education is out of control.
• Education is out of control — yet liberal teaching methods prevail.
• Liberal teaching methods prevail — yet public schools are failing.
• Public schools are failing — yet their funding keeps growing.
• Their funding keeps growing — yet public schools are always underfunded.
• Public schools are always underfunded — yet private schools yield better results for less.
• Private schools yield better results for less — yet public education is the only way out of the crisis.

Lots, lots more like that at the link, every bit of it deserving of your attention. The above PJM piece hails from the earliest days of the Ogabe junta, as storm clouds gathered and the Shadow issued forth from Mordor On The Potomac. Somehow, though, Oleg’s perceptive observations still seem as current and fresh as a cold glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice—only with a way more sour taste, as FUSA’s long, dismal slide into the muck of Progressivist totalitarianism continues.

Oleg is one very smart cookie, a gifted writer of biting satire and more serious, sober-minded stuff both. Having witnessed the socialist nightmare up close and personal himself, can it come as much of a surprise that his lampooning of socialism’s eternal failure and inhumanity would be so sharp and tight? His adopted country is fortunate to have him, and should be listening a lot more closely to his words of warning. They come from one who knows all too well whereof he speaks.

A happy birthday to you, Oleg and The People’s Cube, and many happy returns.