48) Amerika

One of my favorite games ever, Fallout 3, hosts a giant, talking robot soldier in the finale, sporting a full arsenal of eye lasers and backpack nuclear grenades. His name is Liberty Prime, and his charm comes from the 60's anti-communist lines he delivers in the heat of battle. It's somewhat comforting to hear a forty foot tall nuclear robot say "Better dead, than red!" when things are blowing up around you. In case you're curious, his soundboard is here.

The robot was built in this alternate timeline world to combat communist China, but nuclear Armageddon cut those plans short, stranding Liberty Prime inside a bunker under the Pentagon. His appearance as your ally is a liberating comfort that ushers you into a satisfying ending to the game.

But more importantly, Liberty Prime is the game's personification of American anti-communist fears. Even today, communism carries a negative connotation, perpetrated by the victorious and democratic United States after the Cold War. Marx and Engels' legacy has been driven to a slow and painful death, the last embers flickering out in this modern world.

That said, we can still remember the resounding echoes of the Red Scares, or the rampant fears created by McCarthy in the past century by those that were there.

This all leads up to the story of my grandmother. She's no Liberty Prime, but she knows how to blow your head off with a rifle. Born during World War Two, she's survived the Japanese invasion of China, the Chinese Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution of Mao. Hardly a soft-spoken woman in old age, she continues to have the loudest voice in the entire room. People often regret making her angry.

She's worked as a farmer, an assembly worker in a radio factory, and no doubt many other occupations she's never mentioned. These days she lives in the United States, residing in a comfortable apartment in Oakland, California.

Like any other sagacious grandparent, she likes to impose on us her stories of experience, hardship, and secret. She hardly ever mentions anything about Communism, and I've always found it odd that her struggles for money in China never came up as a true complaint. Besides, back then you could be shot for celebrating Mao's death.

As I listen to her complain about the United States and its injustices, I can't help but think that she envies her old life back in China. Of course, she came over here for a reason, but old age and finances might prevent her from going back. I'm sure there's much more to her hypocritical complaints, but it probably justifies her being terrified during the recent Oscar Grant riots, which reached to a block from her building.

She doesn't have alot of time left, maybe a decade or two, and I can't help but think that another memory of communism will die with her, whether its a good memory or a bad one. This extends to my family on both sides, many of whom still reside in China.

I can't tell you whether or not communism is good or bad, but everyday we lose another impression of it with the death of the old. Books can only tell you so much about what it was like. We can't truly relive their memories, so I guess it really won't matter in the long run.

However, Communism is an idea, and some ideas can never die.

Who knows? Maybe when I die, democracy will die with me.