Blog 3883 – 07.10.2026

“Communism Was Just A Red Herring”

There is a great line in one of the three endings to the now classic comedy-movie based on the board game Clue. It goes, “Communism was just a red herring.” The term red herring means distraction.  Roy Cohn, a master of distraction, taught a young Donald Trump this lesson well. Deflecting and distracting are two skills magicians, politicians, and con-men find necessary for not only success but survival in their chosen professions.

Many believe the War in Iran was intended to just be a distraction from the release of the Trump-Epstein Files and that it was intended to be as most of Trumps distractions are brief and quickly overshadowed by a new bright and shiny object to replace it in the next news cycle. Even after promising not to get involved in another endless Middle  Eastern War, DJT failed to avoid stepping into the quagmire of an unprovoked and unnecessary war.

After World War Two, the United Soviet Socialist Republic was devastated having born far more of the brunt of the Axis onslaught than all the other Allies combined. A fact seldom mentioned during the supposed Cold War was that the Russia people would quite literally have starved to death had the U.S. sold them grain at a discounted prices throughout those years. Communism was indeed a red herring, a paper tiger, why even the massive May Day parades showing off their tactical missiles and armaments were just a show. 

The military industrial complex in this country and the politicians that were and still are wholly-owned by it needed a threatening world power to defend against. Fear is a great distraction.

Godless Communists were the perfect foil, Joe McCarthy made his name and short-lived fame as a Communist hunter aided in his Don Quixote windmill tilting quest by a young lawyer named Roy Cohn. Donald John Trump has long lambasted “windmills” as well and of late has trotted out an old enemy, Godless Communists. Mister Trump, never the sharpest tool in the shed, knows about as much about Communism as he does windmills, but he does know people and people are easily distracted. If he can keep our attention focused on a senseless war, a ball room, a reflecting pool, failed State Fair, new Airforce One, or calling women reporters ugly people and “Piggy”, or a hundred other distractions, he can continue to raid the U.S.Treasury enriching himself and his family while evading the consequences of lifetime of raping, pillaging, profiteering, and self-aggrandizement.

So many distractions, red herrings, and the Godless Communists are just one more attempt to hold on to the power that is slipping from his grasp. In the end the grifters, the con men, the jugglers find it increasingly more difficult to distract, to keep that extra ball in the air.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White