Steven Travers

“Brezhnev and Nixon flew by helicopter down the coast south to San Clemente. Brezhnev stared out the window at the magnificent estates dotting the beaches for mile after mile. He remarked to Nixon that surely this was a trick, a “Potemkin village” of a sort, or special “dachas,” where only the elites of the U.S. government were able to live in such luxury. Nixon smiled and said, no, these were middle-class families who, by dint of the capitalist work ethos, owned these homes and raised families there. Brezhnev was dumbstruck that average people lived like that.”
― Steven Travers, The Duke, the Longhorns, and Chairman Mao: John Wayne's Political Odyssey

“This was the big trump card of Marxist-Leninist theory, the idea that people in the present were never more important than the goal, the plan, or the future—some utopian land that everybody would occupy once “purification” had rid it of the bourgeoisie.”
― Steven Travers, The Duke, the Longhorns, and Chairman Mao: John Wayne's Political Odyssey