We will bury you!

I had a flashback today. I was nine years old and in grade school at Our Lady of Grace in Chicago, Illinois. When we got to class that day our teacher who was a Catholic nun told us that we were going to say some extra prayers. This was back in the good old “duck and cover” days when we were expecting the Russians to send an atomic bomb to kill us all and they were expecting the same from us. The day before, the premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, gave a speech during which he took off his shoe and pounded it on the podium and yelled at the ambassadors from Western nations “We will bury you”. Needless to say our poor teacher was terrified about this when she heard it on the news and so she did what nuns did best in those days…she transferred her terror to us. What Khrushchev was actually trying to say was that the Communist system would in the end turn out to be more productive than Western democracies and they would bury us with their production of wash machines, refrigerators, and automobiles, etcetera.

Flash forward 50 years. There is now a Communist country who is almost succeeding in burying us with everything from soup to nuts. Just about everything at Walmart comes from China. Perhaps Nikita was right after all and it is finally time for us to really start worrying. I think it may be prudent for me to practice my old “duck and cover” routine again and break out my rosary beads. Don’t forget children, when you see a flash of bright light close your eyes and don’t look at it. Just bend forward and down as hard as you can and kiss your ass goodbye.