I’ve been doing a lot of random research lately that has been consuming my time as I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I would like to. The more I learn about history the more I realize that this is a subject that has been severely overlooked in our society. In fact, it’s my belief that if more people actually took the time to study history they would clearly see that most of the headline stories in mainstream media would cause people to stop what they are doing, shake their heads in disbelief, and look a little more into what is really going on.
I know very little about Romania so I was a little shocked when I discovered that in 1989, citizens of Romania rose up and overthrew an oppressive dictator named Ceausescu (whom I had never heard of). I came across this short 8 minute film about the topic and I’ll let it explain everything as it does a very good job. Bear with me as I do have a point in this history lesson that will become obvious by the end of this post. All I’m going to say here is if you choose to skip over the video and go straight to the end then you’ll miss out.
There is a reason for the saying “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Those who aren’t even aware of history are setting themselves up for circumstances that are far worse than history.
After watching this video I went to Amazon to check out the book they mentioned “Red Horizons,” authored by Ion Mihai Pacepa (Leader of DIE – Dept of Internal Information, what an aptly named acronym) . This tells the story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescus’ crimes, lifestyle, and corruption that went on in Romania during the time of his rule. While reading the reviews I came across a recent article in the WSJ from the author of this very samebook entitled “What I Learned as a Car Czar.”. I found that extremely odd and I wasn’t even going to do a post about this video but when I started connecting some dots I felt like I had to share.
They say history repeats itself. If you are like me and have lived two lives, you have a good chance of seeing the re-enactment with your own eyes. The current takeover of General Motors by the U.S. government and United Auto Workers makes me think back to Romania’s catastrophic mismanagement of the car factories it built jointly with the French companies Renault and Citroen. I was Romania’s car czar.
When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided in the mid-1960s that he wanted to have a car industry, he chose me to start the project rolling. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I knew nothing about manufacturing cars, but neither did anyone else among Ceausescu’s top men. However, my father had spent most of his life running the service department of the General Motors affiliate in Bucharest.
Do some own digging on your own and see how much you can open your own eyes to what is going on around us. I really don’t enjoy politics at any level and I certainly don’t enjoy doing any type of research in this area but I’m learning that investing and politics are inseparable. And the last time I checked we still have free speech.
