The following is recounted by “torquewrench” commenting at the Ace of Spades HQ.
An old acquaintance of my father was the ne plus ultra of limousine liberals.
She married old money. Her husband conked of a heart attack shortly thereafter.
She proceeded to live on a huge estate while supporting every lefty cause you can imagine, and totally failing to see the contradiction. During the Cold War, she led a “peace” delegation to the USSR, where they got the full bore Potemkin-village treatment, showing them how wonderful life was under Communism. And absolutely would not shut up about it after she got back. Why, if it weren’t for that war criminal Reagan, everyone everywhere could enjoy such glories.
“She should have stayed,” I grumbled, none too quietly.
Anyway, I got into it with her at one point about medical care, and her visit to a Moscow hospital, about which she rhapsodized, and I said, “You _do_ realize that in actual Soviet hospitals, there’s typically no hot water or clean sheets on the wards, and patients have to buy and bring their own medicine and surgical supplies? You _do_ realize you were shown a hospital that only the Party elite are admitted to?”
“That’s a lie,” she told me primly but firmly.
Anyway, a year or two later, she and I both ended up at a party at the home of mutual acquaintances. One of the guests had just come from Israel, where his family had just welcomed a cousin, who was a Soviet refusenik who had just gotten out of the USSR finally, thanks to Jackson-Vanik. The cousin arrived in severe ill health. Had to be assisted off the plane and taken immediately for medical attention.
The guest was talking loudly about how sick his cousin was on arrival, and relayed his cousin’s horror stories of Soviet medical care. “There’s no hot water or clean sheets on the wards! Patients have to buy and bring their own medicine! Those Party bastards enjoy the best, while ordinary people get the worst!”
I looked down the table at Mrs. Limousine Liberal. She looked as though this guy had just tilted her head back and taken a long piss up her nostrils. It was ABSOLUTELY GLORIOUS to see her having her commie propaganda fantasies refuted in real time by hard cold reality. One of the best experiences of my life.
I later said to the Israeli guy, “But Mrs. LL has been to the Soviet Union and she will assure you that the medical care there is second to none.” He looked across the room at her with an expression of the purest and most distilled hatred you could ever hope to see.
Doing my part for peace and understanding, yo.
