Our wonderfully illustrated, 134 pages-long paperback Shakedown Socialism is now in print.
True to the title, our marketing efforts were exclusively focused on lobbying the government to grant this book a "must-buy" status. As a result, all of you now MUST BUY this book. We repeat - BUY - as opposed to a five-finger discount, spontaneous redistribution into your pocket, or waiting for the government to do all that for you. Neither should you wait for the DVD. This book requires immediate action. You must act now: reach into your pocket and pay $12.95 plus shipping and handling. Immediately.
Our lobbying efforts have also resulted in the government categorization of this book as a "must-read." Not a "must-leaf-through" or a "must-look-at-the-pictures-only" mind you! Those categories are assigned to authors with no useful connections, shaky ideological standing, and weak writing skills while contacting important people. The official "must-read" status means that you must read it and you must like it.
~
In addition to "must-buy" and "must-read," this is also a "must-ask-for-it-in-the-store" book. Having spent all our budget on lobbying, we had barely enough cash left to get the book up on Amazon. So don't expect to see it in the stores. Therefore, whenever you happen near a bookstore - even if you already have this book - stop by and ask the manager to show you Shakedown Socialism on the shelf. And if he can't do that, that capitalist running dog will have to look it up in the national online book catalog and order some copies due to the unrelenting popular demand.
Rest assured that once our book is on the shelf, the book-buying masses of workers and peasants will be attracted by its gloriously yellow, glossy cover. They will put down their shovels, hammers, and sickles - or sacks with beets and potatoes if they are toiling intelligentsia - and, with leathery, callused fingers, leaf through its truth-filled pages, admire the illustrations, and read a few sentences, slowly muttering words under the vodka breath. Before you know it, they'll be making the right consumer choice and checking if they have $12.95 American rubles left in their frayed pockets.
In other words, this is a "must-promote-yourself" book. Your help is expected.
You must also translate Shakedown Socialism into every world language and ship it to the downtrodden around the globe at your own expense. It would be nice if someone could transmit it in Morse code into the outer space. Knowledge of foreign languages or Morse code does not matter. What matters is your intentions. We will never reach the desired equality if we continue to show off and judge each other by the results of our work.
You must also translate Shakedown Socialism into every world language and ship it to the downtrodden around the globe at your own expense. It would be nice if someone could transmit it in Morse code into the outer space. Knowledge of foreign languages or Morse code does not matter. What matters is your intentions. We will never reach the desired equality if we continue to show off and judge each other by the results of our work.
CONE OF SILENCE
Early this summer I was contacted by Rob Shearer, the owner of Greenleaf Press in Nashville, TN. He had read my seven-part Unions, Lenin, and the American Way and thought that it would make a great illustrated book, whose relevance will only grow as the months go on.
This series of essays appeared on PajamasMedia.com about a year ago, and later I posted them on The People's Cube with plenty of illustrations. Until now people are sharing it on various forums and recommending it to friends and family. This is how my publisher also discovered them, proving my theory that there are hundreds of books screaming to get out of the People's Cube pages. This is only the beginning.
Making the book wasn't as easy as it sounds. Many of the illustrations in the online version couldn't be transferred into the book. I had to create a set of new original graphics; some of them you can find on the book's website, which I also built for the occasion. Add cover design and layout and you'll get the idea of what I've been doing for the last couple of months.
Last but not least, David Horowitz, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer wrote some outstanding blurbs to put on the cover of my first book, for which I'm extremely thankful.
About the author.
Growing up in the USSR, where the only permitted sources of information were textbooks and the official media, I believed that the Soviet Union was the most advanced society, while all other countries lived in poverty and oppression, devoid of the sun of Marxism-Leninism. I wanted them to become more like the USSR for their own good, and couldn't wait to grow up and live in the communist future, not worrying about money.
With years, as I began to encounter boundaries to intellectual inquiry, coupled with rampant hypocrisy and corruption, I initially attributed it to the wrong, dogmatic interpretation of Marxism by the ruling elites. Next came the realization that Marxism was not the solution, but the cause of the dysfunctional system, and that the communist utopia was only a dead-end exit in humanity's long and stressful journey towards progress. I took on activism, joined political underground, collected signatures in defense of dissidents, and wrote articles and short stories that satirized socialism and the self-delusional Soviet regime. Most of it was never published.
I moved to the United States in 1994, hoping to forget about politics and enjoy life in a country that was ruled by reason and common sense, whose citizens were appreciative of constitutional rights, the rule of law, and the prosperity of free market capitalism. But what I found was a society deeply infected by the leftist disease of "progressivism" that was jeopardizing real societal progress. So I started writing again, this time in English.
The result is this book, as well as many more essays, political parodies, and cartoons, published in various media in America and around the world. Most of it is collected at my satirical website ThePeoplesCube.com - a spoof of "progressive"ideology, which Rush Limbaugh described on his show as "a Stalinist version of the Onion."
Oleg Atbashian
Got to both sites:
SHAKEDOWN SOCIALISM
The People's Cube
Hat tip: iOWNTHEWORLD
0 Comments - Share Yours!:
Post a Comment