After all, by and large, Americans are proud, hard-working, freedom-loving, success-appreciating, charitable individuals. How did we become government handout and favors seekers, racial, sexual, and religious whiners, who-do-you-know what-group-do-you-belong-to and not what-can-you-do people? it's all based on a single political technique, the Cheburashka scheme.

::::::::

There is little doubt that the U.S. is moving away from its main constitutional principle of limited federal government toward a tax/borrow/print and spend government usurping unlimited unconstrained unconstitutional powers. In the process the government destroys individual liberties unconditionally guaranteed and protected by the Constitution.

How Did They Trick Us into Accepting the Mess?

We are on the way to a totalitarian and bankrupt (financially and morally) state. How did this happen? What was the technique the government used that tricked us into compliance and acceptance of the direction toward a “Bright Socialist Future”?

After all, by and large, Americans are proud, hard-working, freedom-loving, success-appreciating, charitable individuals. How did we become government handout and favors seekers, racial, sexual, and religious whiners, who-do-you-know what-group-do-you-belong-to and not what-can-you-do people?

The Cheburashka Scheme

After thinking long and hard, I came to realize that it’s all based on a single political technique, the Cheburashka scheme. It’s not that faced with a problem the federal government develops new and advanced methods for how to cloud our minds. They use the same technique over and over again. It’s simple and powerful. And it works.

It works on you regardless of whether you are a Republican or Democrat, and it works for the government regardless of whether it is Republican or Democrat. It does not require a lot of work in selling another anti-constitutional, liberty killing, federal government expanding, money wasting government initiative. Of course, they use focus groups, polls, and speech writers to refine the technique, but they always end up with a variation of the Cheburashka scheme that a friend once told me.

Imagine a person, a young man, walking down a street in Moscow, say during the 80’s. He sees a young woman crossing his path. She slows down and opens her coat for a brief moment exposing her nakedness to the complete stranger. Then she wraps herself back up in her coat and walks away as if nothing had happened. Nobody noticed anything. The young man continues his walk when, in a couple of minutes, a man approaches him and asks: “Did you see Cheburashka?” “Yes,” replies the still somewhat confused young man. “Pay three rubles.”

So this is the scheme in its genius simplicity: provide a service that the person didn’t ask for and then present a bill.

(It is irrelevant of course that Cheburashka is a well-known Russian toy and a hero of many famous children’s cartoons, invented in 60’s by the Russian writer Eduard Uspensky. “Cheburashka” has the same relevance as Ella Fitzgerald’s chi-chi: “I can’t give you anything but chi-chi.”)

Cheburashka in the U.S.

How do politicians use the Cheburashka scheme? Here are a few examples.

“Did you see War on Terror?” “Pay.” “Did you see special programs for mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them?” “Pay.” “Farm subsidies?” “Social security?” “Drugs approval?” “Healthcare?” “Did your company receive bailouts?” “Did you get a low interest loan?” “Do you deduct your mortgage?” “Do you enjoy government-insured deposits?” “Pay, Pay, Pay!”

Like the young man on the street in Moscow, you are desperately looking around, feeling insulted, violated, yet left alone to the grace of your burglar. You realize that you are innocent but an integral part of the Cheburashka scheme: its target, its engine, and its facilitator.

So, I am not asking you to take an active position or, God forbid, resist or try to remove yourself from the scheme. No. I just want you to be aware next time when you are the target in the Cheburashka scheme.

Today, for example, the U.S. announced its intention to extend its power to seize non-bank financial companies. “… it’s a necessary thing for any government to have a broader range of tools for dealing with these kinds of things, so you can protect the economy from the kind of risks posed by institutions that get to the point where they’re systemic,” said Geithner.

A Major Rule of the Scheme

An important rule in the Cheburashka scheme is to pretend that the whole thing is routine and insignificant. Like using innocent-sounding  words (”tools”) when taking away your basic liberties.  What comes to your mind? A screwdriver? A hammer? Sickle and hammer?  Remember Bush’s: “One of the most important tools to combat terror is the Patriot Act?” You do want the country to be protected, don’t you?

Now Obama’s publicani are asking for tools. Do you want the economy protected? “Did you see Cheburashka?”

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Cheburashka image from here.

March 24, 2009

Zak Maymin. [send him mail] is former professor of mathematics and a hedge fund manager, editor of publicani.com, and author of  Publicani.

Copyright © 2009 by Zak Maymin. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

 

Authors Website: www.publicani.com

Authors Bio:
Dr. Maymin is the author of Publicani ($7.95)...................

"A Riveting, Entertaining Read

Publicani is not a book to pick up lightly. It is a riveting page turner that could, if it affects you like it affected me, capture your attention, at the cost of sleep and reprioritization of your work day.

It's a story with strong characters and a fascinating plot that spans the globe with politics, intrigue, a bit of science fiction and a bit of kabbalistic mysticism that are all woven together into a credible novel that at the end is compelling and satisfying.

As a reviewer, this was a pleasant surprise, when so many political novels are more lecture than good story, how well told this was."
~ Rob Kall, OpEdNews.com, Publisher
......................."An appropriate read for our current events
In short: I really enjoyed this book. The theme centers around the universal struggle for freedom and liberty in a post-modern world where the term "thought police" has gone from metaphor to an actual existence in the form of a government agency. Like all government agencies it has an innocent sounding name and a purpose that aims to improve the "common good." Following a scientific breakthrough allowing the physical transfer of intelligence between people, the government has decided that certain individuals with "brains to spare" are to become "volunteer" donors to such important members of society as politicians, military leaders, ambassadors, and select researchers. This is all for the good of the nation of course, but it has some severe consequences for the donor, especially if they don't comply.

You see, as with all "voluntary" government programs, if you dare to not cooperate, you suffer the consequences. "Publicani" takes us through this scenario time and again through the eyes of many characters who are the enforcers and the enforcees... and sometimes both. This book manages to play this scenario out while engaging in many intentional parallels with the current politics of the day, and I think this is why it was so enjoyable to me. The underlying theme throughout is simply this: If one of us can be enslaved, then we are all slaves. For this theme alone this book is worth reading, but the story is very interesting without being overly wordy. I finished the book in about three hours and I think it was time well spent.

Finally, I think this book offers some perspective to those of us who don't really see the significance of what is happening in the United States today. In the book an extreme circumstance is at hand: the government forcibly ravages your brain. However, is that not indirectly what the government is doing now? If you are a very successful, highly educated businessman who deals in Intellectual Property, you are punished by this government as being an "evil, greedy, rich" person. With this justification, the government promptly taxes you at every turn: the highest income tax rate, capital gains taxes on your investments, property taxes on your car and house, sales taxes at the local and state level, energy taxes on your electricity and gas, the list goes on and on until you die and they then take half of what you had left!

So in the end, the fruits of your intelligence are taken from you. In Publicani, they just go straight to the source. In real life, we're almost there.
~ Thomas Utley (South Carolina, USA)