Happy Birthday, Vladimir!

No, not Vladimir V. Putin.  He was born on October 7, 1952, although I can understand how any reader might assume it was him, given that he has just had a great victory with the Mueller Report "exonerating" his fan boy in the White House from engaging in criminal conspiracy with him, much less getting on fan boy's case too seriously over his repeated lies and attempts to obstruct justice, allowing VVP to return to overtly lying by denying that Russia had anything to do with the 2016 election, even though the Mueller Report details extensive such efforts and Mueller even indicted several Russians (conveniently sitting in Russia and not getting prosecuted) for those efforts.  Heck, Rudy Giuliani and most of Fox News will not disagree with his lies, or at least they will say the efforts were just fine and necessary to save us from the awful Hillary whose private phone and emails could get hacked by dangerous foreign powers such as, well, Russia.

The birthday Vladimir is Ulyanove, aa, Lenin, whose  corpse continues to lie in the Mausoleum on Red Square, despite a few efforts by VVP to remove it.  However, every time VVP has made such efforts he has been stymied by loud opposition from the still there if not very strong Communist Party, as well as longstanding disagreements over where the corpse should go.  Lenin is not a figure like Gorbachev whom VVP openly reviles for weakening the Soviet/Russian state, nor is he one that VVP is actively trying to rehaabilitate, such as Joseph Stalin, whom he admires as the Great National Leader during the Great Patriotic War.  No, he mostly ignores today's birthday boy, regarding whom I think he has mixed feelings and does not know quite how to deal with.  Best just to leave his corpse be in the Mausoleum with minimal comment.

As it was, Vladimir Ulyanov/Lenin was born 149 years ago today, 1870, exactly 100 years before the first Earth Day in the US, which, yes, today is the 49th anniversary of that event, organized by the late senator from Wisconsin (whom I met), Gaylord Nelson.  I have posted on this in the past, but at the time, harder line Marxists at radical UW-Madison jeered at that first Earth Day, both because it distracted people from remembering Lenin on his centennial (clearly a capitalist plot) and also because it was distracting people from opposing US imperialism in the Vietnam War.  Heck, reduced auto emissions?  I remember well certain people sneering at that as something to spend any time worrying about, especially as concern about overpopulation was clearly a Malthusian, anti-Marxist, racist, reactionary, colonialist plot, and so on and on.  Really.  That was what was said, including by some people I still know, but do not remind them of that.  But, hey, the whole thing was a plot by Richard Nixon and his capitalist cronies to distract everybody from the Vietnam War.  Yeah.

Needless to say as of today this all looks ironic, if not absurd, even if it did not do so at the time, although it must be admitted that a lot more people are thinking and talking about Earth Day today than the fact that it is Lenin's birthday.  Those old Marxist-Leninists were right about worrying about that one.  And not having the leader of Russia making mention or fuss about it just really sticks it in.

But the real irony is that today being strongly for the environment as expressed in the Green New Deal is the hallmark of being a "democratic socialist," something that remains very poorly defined.  That old "Brown Marxism" that worried about coal miners getting laid off because of those darned auto emissions are gone or moved over to support Donald Trump, although his fan boying VVP in Russia might look familiar to some of those folks from 1970, especially those in groups that also cuddled up to the then Soviet Union.  Life is funny.

Anyway, folks, happy birthday to old Vladdie Ulyanov, and also, have a Happy  Earth Day, you all!

Barkley Rosser