The following is an important and highly controversial document from the previous communist movement (of the 1970 and 80s). This is an argument against socialist revolution attempting to reclaim patriotism or nationalist symbols in a country like the United States. The essay was part of a major theoretical effort by the Revolutionary Communist Party in the period of 1979-1984 to break with rightist and patriotic legacies within the international communist movement. It contains extensive sections written by Bob Avakian during this period — one of the times when a younger Avakian was still pressing the envelope of communist thinking and making creative contributions.
This essay was first published in 1980 and has been unavailable for decades. It has been republished by the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. It is part of an archival project making documents of the “New Communist Movement” available to revolutionaries today for study, evaluation and summation.
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On the Question of So-Called “National Nihilism”:
You Can’t Beat the Enemy While Raising His Flag
Can revolution in the U.S. today come wrapped in the American flag? Can we “claim it as our own”? Should a revolutionary party be motivated by a desire to “save America. . . from her rulers and for her people”? Can a class-conscious revolutionary in the U.S. “have pride in the true history of this country”? These are questions which have posed themselves again and again in the development of the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and are doing so today. In fact, similar questions of national pride and patriotism have historically been very important in the advances–and setbacks–of the international communist movement.
Earl Browder, the naked revisionist former leader of the Communist Party, USA gave his infamous answer to these questions in the mid-1930s when he coined the phrase “Communism is 20th Century Americanism” and said that the CPUSA was carrying on the revolutionary tradition of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the like. Unfortunately, when all was said and done, Earl Browder was right about the CPUSA (though most certainly wrong about genuine communism) because the CP had completely taken up the program and outlook of bourgeois democracy. Such a stand may be American and definitely is bourgeois, but for a communist it is a thoroughly counter-revolutionary one, especially here in the imperialist USA in this, the era of proletarian revolution.
In part 1, I situated the work of communist reporting within the larger need for consciousness among the people. “Knowing things to change things.” Here in part 2, I’d like to break down, into the component parts, what that i believe our journalism should seek to accomplish.
For several years, I have avoided using heavy quotes from the classics of Marxism — in fact, I have opposed the very idea of “classics.” I want to undermine any authority-based fundamentalism that seeks truth mainly through sacred texts of our movement. In this essay I make an exception — I have included extensive quotes from Lenin below.
My reason for quoting Lenin is the usual reason that people use quotations: I think on the questions of media, consciousness and organization Lenin made some important arguments. And I have allowed him to speak in his own voice here.
By Mike Ely
What does communist journalism consist of?
The following is only a tentative presentation of views: I am writing quickly and we need to dig into this more deeply as we move forward with the three tiers of a new beginning and the “Iskra and Pravda” projects that contains.
But for now let me lay out some features of our reporting/investigative work for discussion and debate.
1) Catching them red handed: Exposure hot on the heel of events
Within communist work, the analysis of news, struggles and the outrages of the system plays a crucial role.
Lenin argued for “the organization of comprehensive political exposure” in the early 1900s — starting the process that eventually produced the communist daily newspaper Pravda (Truth) in 1912 — aimed at a broad popular audience.
“It is possible to organize non-revolutionary movements without revolutionary journalism. Trade unions do it all the time. There are lots of organized movements (of right and left) that draw people into motion without fundamentally (or all-sidedly) challenging the assumptions of the current society….
“To organize (over time) a more sweeping revolutionary challenge to the whole capitalist system, and to the social relations built on the basis of capitalism, it is necessary to promulgate a more systematic critique of current society and politics — and that requires communist reporting and analysis.”
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By Mike Ely
In a recent discussion here on Kasama the question was raised about what is communist journalism. What do we communists see as the link between preparations for revolution (in the U.S.) and our reporting on widespread events.
Needed to consciously change the world
The starting point for communist revolutionaries is this:
For oppressed people to change the world in very specific and positive ways they need to understand the world. We Maoists have a saying: “Know things to change things.” And like many Maoist sayings this is deceptively simple and pithy — and has several larger discussions coiled within it.
We all are part of changing the world all the time — but we rarely do so in ways consciously connected to liberation.
What is the relationship between strategy and tactics? How should revolutionaries prepare for decisive struggles? What form of organization should they build? How do they build it?
Although written in 1901, these questions continue to challenge new generations of radicals. We’re posting it here as part of our ongoing discussion on revolutionary strategy.
In recent years the question of “what is to be done” has confronted Russian Social-Democrats with particular insistence. It is not a question of what path we must choose (as was the case in the late eighties and early nineties), but of what practical steps we must take upon the known path and how they shall be taken. It is a question of a system and plan of practical work. And it must be admitted that we have not yet solved this question of the character and the methods of struggle, fundamental for a party of practical activity, that it still gives rise to serious differences of opinion which reveal a deplorable ideological instability and vacillation. On the one hand, the “Economist” trend, far from being dead, is endeavouring to clip and narrow the work of political organisation and agitation. On the other, unprincipled eclecticism is again rearing its head, aping every new “trend”, and is incapable of distinguishing immediate demands from the main tasks and permanent needs of the movement as a whole. This trend, as we know, has ensconced itself in Rabocheye Dyelo.[3] This journal’s latest statement of “programme”, a bombastic article under the bombastic title “A Historic Turn” (“Listok” Rabochevo Dyela, No. 6[4]), bears out with special emphasis the characterisation we have given. Only yesterday there was a flirtation with “Economism”, a fury over the resolute condemnation of Rabochaya Mysl,[5] and Plekhanov’s presentation of the question of the struggle against autocracy was being toned down. But today Liebknecht’s words are being quoted: “If the circumstances change within twenty-four hours, then tactics must be changed within twenty-four hours.” There is talk of a “strong fighting organisation for direct attack, for storming, the autocracy; of “broad revolutionary political agitation among the masses” (how energetic we are now—both revolutionary and political!); of “ceaseless calls for street protests”; of “street demonstrations of a pronounced [sic!] political character”; and so on, and so forth.
“Engels recognizes, not two forms of the great struggle of [communism], as is the fashion among us, but three, placing the theoretical struggle on a par with the first two.”
The following is excerpted from What is To Be Done?, where Lenin digs into the nature of communist work.
At the time (1901) when this work was written, the communist movement was still called “Social-Democracy.” That is the term used below.
by V.I. Lenin
We can judge from that how tactless Rabocheye Dyelo is when, with an air of triumph, it quotes Marx’s statement:
“Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.”
To repeat these words in a period of theoretical disorder is like wishing mourners at a funeral many happy returns of the day.
Moreover, these words of Marx are taken from his letter on the Gotha Programme, in which he sharply condemns eclecticism in the formulation of principles. If you must unite, Marx wrote to the party leaders, then enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make theoretical “concessions”. This was Marx’s idea, and yet there are people among us who seek-in his name to belittle the significance of theory!
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.
Gregory Lucero’s essay “Thoughts on Student Organizing” produced an engagement here on Kasama over how we communists do our work — how we connect our communist dreams with the people, their concerns and struggles.
In my own response to Greg, I mentioned that there is a historic trend that imagines revolutionary work as “leading day-to-day struggles of the workers, plus talking socialism.” This has deep roots in the socialist movement of the U.S. and took shape as the early Communist Party USA’s “left economist” approach (until their major right turn in the mid-1930s).
I wrote:
“Left economism does involve some public discussion of socialism and communism. It is an approach that attempts to be revolutionary — and that disdains the crass rightism of ‘hidden’ socialists. But while an attempt at revolutionary work, left economism involves a built-in inherent disconnect between that talk of socialism and the dynamics emerging from its particular expectations from immediate struggles.
“It assumes that we will lead people in their struggles (and win their trust), and we will creatively promote socialism as an idea — and out of that mix, the people will adopt our views and become pro-socialist. In fact, history shows that this is not how things come out.”
“when you say that we resolve the disconnect between immediate struggles and final goals by “considering all our work . . . in terms of that final goal . . .” what does this concretely mean?”
For the moment, I can just list a few points because of time constraints.
This essay raises some important strategic questions for revolutionaries: specifically, how capitalist restoration is carried out and how revolutions can fight against that restoration while exploring issues of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It should be expressed that posting this does not imply endorsement with the views of the author, but we share in the hopes to spur deeper conversations about the nature of these issues.
As someone who has recently broken with anarchism, and as someone who had till then been an anarchist for the better part of a decade (almost since I first became interested in politics), it has been instructive for me to read for the first time what Marxists say about revolutionary struggle after the overthrow of the old, capitalist state has been successful. It is not often talked about by anarchists, who nowadays shun anything that might sound the least bit authoritarian, and when it does come up, the Marxists are abused with lies and strawmen of all kinds. I’ve come to find, in the few weeks since my deconversion from anarchocommunism, that the anarchists and the Marxists have radically different understandings of what revolution is, its purpose, and how it is carried out. Whereas anarchists see revolution as a struggle primarily focused on overthrowing the state, Marxists see revolution as a constant, living process, devoted to the destruction of the old, oppressive ways of life that does not simply end when the first military seizing of power has been achieved. I now recognize that the Marxist approach is the only practical and informed method of achieving a free communist society.
During the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: In this one picture you can see the complexity of mass mobilization in the mix of consciousness, passivity, obligation and passionate participation
From Bob Avakian’s K. Venu Polemic:
“Lenin does frankly discuss the fact that
“‘in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class.’…
One can only ask here: what is wrong with this?”
“…it does not get to the essence of things if the masses have the formal right to replace leaders, when the social conditions (contradictions) are such that some people are less “replaceable” than others… Voting Mao out of office would only mean that somebody less qualified—or, even worse, someone representing the bourgeoisie instead of the proletariat—would be playing that leadership role. You can’t get around this, and adhering to the strictures of formal democracy would be no help at all.”
“Given the contradictions that characterize the transition from capitalism to communism, worldwide, if the party did not play the leading role that it has within the proletarian state, that role would be played by other organized groups—bourgeois cliques—and soon enough the state would no longer be proletarian, but bourgeois. … the problem with the ruling parties in the revisionist countries is not that they have had a ‘monopoly’ of political power but that they have exercised that political power to restore and maintain capitalism. The problem is that they are not revolutionary, not really communist—and therefore they do not rely on and mobilize the masses to exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, and to continue the revolution under this dictatorship.”
Intro by Mike Ely
I am reading Badiou’s new work “Communist Hypothesis” together with others. It argues that the previous communist Party-State has reached the limits of its historical value. This is connected to a view that the Leninist party itself has shown historical limits, and that new forms of communist organization need to be developed.
We would like to urge our readers to start by tackling (together!) the now available Badiou work on the “The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?” which we have recently posted here on Kasama.
As a counterpoint to that: we are continuing to publish excerpts from a detailed defense of the Party-State by Bob Avakian.
“We must blame ourselves… for still being unable to organize sufficiently wide, striking, and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages.
“When we do that…the most backward workers will understand, or will feel, that the students and religious sects, the peasants and the authors are being abused and outraged by those same dark forces that are oppressing and crushing them at every step of their lives.”
By Mike Ely
What does it mean for communists (who are secular and opposed to the many values of traditional religions) to defend the right to build a massive mosque in the middle of New York City?
Gary asks in a commentary (that is worth reading in its entirety):
“But how does all this fit into the project of promoting revolutionary consciousness in the U.S.?”
Here is a longer excerpt:
“In that Muslims are a religious community, as opposed to an “ethnic” community in the conventional sense (Muslims are as Malcolm realized at some point VERY multi-ethnic), one has to endorse their rights by endorsing religious rights (such as the right to build mosques, construct minarets, follow traditional teachings on wardrobe, follow a halal dietary regimen) etc.
“This is where, for me anyway, it becomes complicated. I’m a Marxist, an atheist. I’m not interested in encouraging my Muslim brothers and sisters to persist in the error that there is a Supreme Being present before the Big Bang. I’d like them to enjoy the pleasures of shrimp, lobster, pork and beer.
“I want to confine my solidarity to human rights defense, while maybe educating some ignorant people about the history of Islam and its relationship to the other “Abrahamic” religions.
“But how does all this fit into the project of promoting revolutionary consciousness in the U.S.?
“If I agitate on behalf of the Nepali revolution, I feel like I’m stirring imaginations towards an alternative future. If I expose the stupidity and viciousness of the Islamophobes, I feel like I’m doing something morally appropriate but not sure how it fits in with revolutionary politics.”
We need a place to dig into Gary’s important question (in its own right).
I want to ask “What is OUR universality?” The Muslims have theirs, the liberal bourgeois democrats have theirs. But what is OUR universality, and what does it have to say about this moment?
“[During 1914-1918] Lenin advanced a number of closely related strategic principles; some that reaffirmed radical positions that had been eroded and others that were essentially new.
“In the first place among these was the revolutionary obligation to utilize all forms of struggle against one’s own imperialism under conditions of imperialist war – including those forms that were “illegal”…
“In second place, Lenin challenged the trajectory of social democracy towards an institutionalized junior management role in various national capitalisms.
“In the third place, the Lenin of this period rejected conceptions of necessary protracted intermediate stages for the Russian revolution.”
“There was a time when I scraped through the Collected Works quite diligently, looking for major Lenin positions that appeared ‘correct’ to me – or, at least, ones that were better than Soviet Marxism’s permitted texts and the ‘famous quotations’… I think some of the Kasama neoMaoists are engaged in a parallel endeavor – attempting to credit Mao with the elements in Chinese development that they view positively, and separating him from those not so positive by assigning them to contending positions within the party, or to the ubiquitous ‘objective limitations.’”
This piece is excerpted from the version that appeared in Sketchy Thoughts blog. Replies by some who are mentioned, as well as others, can be found there as well as at Gathering Forces and Kersplebedeb. Don Hamerquist was a leading figure in the Sojourner Truth Organization (during 70s and 80s). Kasama is posting this in two parts (Part 2 is here) — and the subtitles of those two parts are ours.
Author’s note:
This is a rough piece, slightly modified from two earlier drafts that were circulated privately to generate some discussion. This version is also unfinished and its analysis and strategic and organizational conclusions are tentative and provisional. I apologize for this and for the casual citations and references to authors and political tendencies that I am just getting around to considering carefully. I’m putting the argument out in this form, hoping that any frustrations and irritations with the general sloppiness, as well as the likely differences with political characterizations that are seen as mistaken, will provide added leverage towards needed discussions on revolutionary strategy and organization.Some of the initial responses and reactions are being posted separately. These include a few responses from positions that are cited or criticized in the text. I have made some minor changes in this version as a result of these, but nothing, I think, that would undermine or deflect the thrust of any of the interventions. More such arguments have been solicited and will continue to be welcomed.
“I think that the issue of insurrection, the basic reason to take Lenin seriously, is an essential element of a revolutionary perspective right now. …
“The ebbs and flows of the revolutionary process…combined with the different ruling class policies of suppression and incorporation make it unlikely that any political perspective can incrementally advance towards a revolutionary transformation without there being moments where only an exercise of collective will, a leap into the realm of the possible with no guarantees, will prevent an effective reversal of the process.
“As this dilemma emerges globally in open spaces and across boundaries, with different stages of development and different rates of change forming a complex mosaic where no one element can be treated in isolation, the issue of whether to take power when it appears possible, but also problematic, will inevitably emerge and we will either have a prepared – or an unprepared, and therefore certainly inadequate – response.”
This is the second and final part of this piece — which is excerpted from Sketchy Thoughts blog. Replies are added from Gathering Forces and Kersplebedeb. Don Hamerquist was a leading figure in the Sojourner Truth Organization (during 70s and 80s). Kasama is posting this in two parts (Part 1 is here) — and the subtitles of those parts are ours.
“The working class party must represent the whole class but hopefully will organize the most conscious elements and cannot do so without uniting lots of people in different revolutionary movements… “
Five questions on this:
1) Does the “whole class” in an imperialist country have uniform interests in such a way that one party can represent the whole?
The notion that we communists can represent “the whole class” assumes, on some level, that this whole class has a uniform (or common) set of interests that can therefore be represented. Are there sections of this stratified class that are “bribed” or “privileged”enough by imperialism so that their interests no longer correspond with the international class of propertyless laborers desperately needing revolution?
How a Founding Document Was Found, or
100 of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?
Part IV:
Marking Time, 1977-2002
After 1977 the bottom dropped out of the Iskra-period market. This period of relative neglect is my next and final period. The profession was understandably bored with the topic and felt there were other things to do. The reasons for this neglect are familiar and I will not say much about it, except to point out the following. The careful academic study of ideology and doctrine was rejected partly because it was elitist, top-down, the very opposite of social history, and so on. But it was also rejected because the topic had been done (it would seem) to death. Younger scholars needed new topics, and academic promotion in history departments was certainly not going to someone who neglected archival documents in order to read Lenin’s Complete Works. Everybody therefore found it convenient to assume that not only had the subject been done to academic death, but also that it had been done thoroughly and competently.
The most prominent work of this period — for example, the Robert Service biographies — just played variations on Wolfe pack themes. 70 The opening of the archives in 1991 has paradoxically not been very good for the quest for the historical Lenin. The feeling has grown that Lenin was an awful person whose political project failed miserably, so that studying his political outlook — as opposed to simply dismissing it — is a waste of time. This attitude is combined with collapsing standards of factual scrupulousness (as I have tried to show in various reviews of new work on Lenin). Read the rest of this entry »
How a Founding Document Was Found, or
100 of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?
Part II:
Historical Document, 1906-30
The Revolution of 1905 presented the two party factions with much more urgent and compelling matters of dispute than whether or not Lenin misspoke, and the whole issue quickly slid into the background. Even in 1905 Potresov referred to his analysis of WTBD as “archeological work.” During the second of my two periods — 1906-30 — WTBD was treated, if at all, as an interesting historical document. Mainly it was ignored. In my remarks, therefore, I shall concentrate more on significant absences than on explicit mentions. The following items of evidence need to be taken into account before WTBD can be called a founding document.
Item One is WTBD‘s treatment in the quotation wars in the 1920s when Lenin’s writings were being turned into authoritative and sacrosanct “Leninism.” When I researched this period, I was on the lookout for which works of Lenin were quoted to what effect. I was struck by the fact that WTBD was almost entirely absent. Sherlock Holmes once built a case around the curious incident of the dog that did not bark. Here we have the curious incident of the founding document that was never cited. Read the rest of this entry »
How a Founding Document Was Found, or
100 Years of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?
Part 1
By Lars T. Lih
Once upon a time I taught in the political science department of a small liberal arts college. As one of the teachers of the introductory course for first-year students, I proposed that the reading for the session we spent on Lenin be switched from selections from What Is to Be Done? to Lenin’s final articles of 1923 (this was during the perestroika period when these late articles were by far the most prominent Lenin texts). A colleague — a specialist in Chinese politics — quashed my proposal. After citing the famous sentence in What Is to Be Done? about “consciousness from without,” he commented approximately as follows: “According to Marx, being determines consciousness. According to Lenin, consciousness is independent of working-class being. Lenin stood Marx on his head and this is the basic fact we have to get across to our students.”
This little episode defined for me the undisputed ascendancy of what I will call the textbook interpretation of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? (henceforth WTBD). If a teacher could say only one thing about the outlook of the founder of the Soviet Union and of 20th-century communism, he or she should use this or similar sentences from Lenin’s book of 1902. As is the way with textbooks, this reading of Lenin is presented to students as a plain and simple fact. Indeed, although I was the Soviet specialist in the department, it was my colleague who expressed the consensus of the academic specialists on Russian and Soviet history. Read the rest of this entry »
The RCP letter is subtitled, “Observations by a Supporter of that Revolution from a Communist Internationalist Perspective”. However, because Revolution has published it without any comment or criticism, it is fair to assume that it represents the RCP’s position on the revolution in Nepal.
The UCPN(M) Central Committee’s document is entitled “Present Situation and Historical Task of the Proletariat.” Its contents include:
1. A Short Evaluation of Present Situation [Internationally and in Nepal].
2. On the Party Line and Polarization of Revolutionary Communists.
3. From the Latest Peace Process to the Present: on Party’s Problems and Weaknesses.
4. A Rough Sketch of Immediate Plan.
In this article, we want to oppose the anti-revolutionary RCP line and show the importance of building support for the revolution in Nepal. We will look at the RCP’s thesis of ‘revolutionary movement under revisionist leadership’ as well as looking at the realities of the development of the revolution in Nepal.
This is from Lenin’s Notes of a Publicist. No direct analogy is implied. This is posted to give a sense of the complexity of real events, and the non-linear, wavelike nature of real-world events and real political advances.
by V.I. Lenin
Let us picture to ourselves a man ascending a very high, steep and hitherto unexplored mountain.
Let us assume that he has overcome unprecedented difficulties and dangers and has succeeded in reaching a much higher point than any of his predecessors, but still has not reached the summit.
He finds himself in a position where it is not only difficult and dangerous to proceed in the direction and along the path he has chosen, but positively impossible. He is forced to turn back, descend, seek another path, longer, perhaps, but one that will enable him to reach the summit. The descent from the height that no one before him has reached proves, perhaps, to be more dangerous and difficult for our imaginary traveler than the ascent—it is easier to slip; it is not so easy to choose a foothold; there is not that exhilaration that one feels in going upwards, straight to the goal, etc. One has to tie a rope round oneself, spend hours with all alpenstock to cut footholds or a projection to which the rope could be tied firmly; one has to move at a snail’s pace, and move downwards, descend, away from the goal; and one does not know where this extremely dangerous and painful descent will end, or whether there is a fairly safe detour by which one can ascend more boldly, more quickly and more directly to the summit.
Original six Black Panthers (November, 1966) Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. Newton, Sherman Forte, Bobby Seale. Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton.
By most accounts, an explicit Maoist ideology and movement did not emerge on the U.S. political landscape until Mao initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. A precursor to the revolution had erupted in China nine years earlier, when Mao appealed to his countrymen to “let a hundred flowers blossom” and “let a hundred schools of thought contend.” That campaign was just a flash in the pan, however, and it was quickly silenced after too many flowers openly criticized the Chinese Communist Party.
But the Cultural Revolution was different. Hierarchies in the party and in the Red Army were ostensibly eliminated. Criticism and self-criticism was encouraged-as long as it coincided with Mao Zedong thought. Communists suspected of supporting a capitalist road were brought to trial. Bourgeois intellectuals in the academy and government were expected to perform manual labor, to work among the people as a way of breaking down social hierarchies. And all vestiges of the old order were to be eliminated. The youth, now the vanguard, attacked tradition with a vengeance and sought to create new cultural forms to promote the revolution. The people of China were now called on to educate themselves. The Cultural Revolution intensified the constituent elements of Maoism: the idea of constant rebellion and conflict; the concept of the centrality of people over economic laws or productive forces; the notion of revolutionary morality.
Kasama recently posted a discussion of the ways the internet has undermined the traditional media protection of ruling class figures. It is part of a much needed discussion the new media. Here is a response by Ben Seattle who has described himself as a cyberleninist.
By Ben Seattle
The comments by Mike and Nando are thoughtful and perceptive.
My favorite movie is Spartacus. Near the end, in the final battle scene, the army of slaves is surrounded by three Roman armies. We all know how it ends. No large-scale revolt of slaves in the ancient world ended successfully. The movie had a strong influence on me when I first saw it at a young age. It was my first exposure to class politics and it helped prepare me for the time, later in life, when I decided I was a revolutionary.
If you saw the movie, you will remember this scene. You wanted the slaves to win. I used to fantasize, after watching it as a kid, how things might have been different if the army of slaves, faced with the endless ranks of Roman soldiers marching in precise formations, had possession of a few modern weapons. Maybe a couple of mortars.
The endless rows of Roman soldiers would have fallen down en masse; and what was left would have scattered like so many cockroaches when you turn on the kitchen light in a cheap apartment.
Of course, that is fantasy. We are materialists. We deal with the world as it is, not with dreams of sudden and near-infinite power handed to us at the last minute by god [1]. And, we all know that, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
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