RRC Archives

JAMES LILEKS:


In the summer of ’78 I was back home in Fargo between college years – exiled from the civilized world, cast into barbarity. During the day I labored under the hot sun painting giant fuel tanks next to an auto-body shop that exhaled poison and Eagles all day. A sensitive soul, cast into such grim circumstances. A noble soul, a poet, reduced to living on the gruel of hometown “culture,â€

So should Bush go further in his squelching of dissent? Do you think that the old USSR was a better place? What is your point?

Two straightforward paragraphs from Lileks. Sorry you didn't get it.

the soviets were sent to labor camps. we willingly silence ourselves. different approach, same outcome.
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is a good read as well.

right, that was written about 78. Information has been squelched. One can't even organize dissent when one is ignorant.

We will read about what went down in Abu Ghraib and we will feel ashamed.

(I should have read Ahab's post; I feel likewise.)

L K Day wrote:Two straightforward paragraphs from Lileks. Sorry you didn't get it.

some people do need a weatherman to tell them which way the wind blows...

the issue isn't so much dissent as it is the manufactoring of consent. Complacence, apathy and the diffusion of responsibility are way more effective than any labor camp. We are free, after all.

good point- welcome to France- isn't Jerry Lewis sooo funny?

By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong and man did we have some serious BO

Yes, less like USSR 1980 and more like Nazi Germany 1938.

ahab wrote:the issue isn't so much dissent as it is the manufactoring of consent. Complacence, apathy and the diffusion of responsibility are way more effective than any labor camp. We are free, after all.