Gesen writes that, by the 1980s, Russian no longer knew how to think about themselves.
"After fifty years of purges, arrests, and, most damaging, unrelenting pressure on what had become an isolated thought universe, the Russian intellectual landscape was populated by barely articulated ghosts of once vibrant ideas. Even Communist ideology was a shadow of its former self, a set of ritually repeated words that had lost all meaning."
. . . and quoting Yugoslav Marxist dissident Milovan Djilas, "Science gradually yielded to propaganda, and as a result propaganda tended more and more to resemble itself as science."
Russia continues to struggle with "an isolated thought universe" while Donald Trump and his side kicks such as Mike Pence and Paul Gazelka try to create similar conditions here with their attacks on the press and science and their elevation of lies to empty truths. We must resist this with all out capacities because it can happen here. But then, as a New Years resolution, we must commit to examining the possibility that Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Paul Gaelka are but extensions of ourselves. What is the nature of the isolated thought universe that we live in that, for example, has allowed us to permit our nation to persist in endless war in Afghanistan?
In 2019 we must examine what words that are supposedly at the heart of our beliefs that have actually lost all but ritualistic meaning. Do we have the intellectual tools and the cultural capacity to do that?
Tim
Central Minnesota Political
"After fifty years of purges, arrests, and, most damaging, unrelenting pressure on what had become an isolated thought universe, the Russian intellectual landscape was populated by barely articulated ghosts of once vibrant ideas. Even Communist ideology was a shadow of its former self, a set of ritually repeated words that had lost all meaning."
. . . and quoting Yugoslav Marxist dissident Milovan Djilas, "Science gradually yielded to propaganda, and as a result propaganda tended more and more to resemble itself as science."
Russia continues to struggle with "an isolated thought universe" while Donald Trump and his side kicks such as Mike Pence and Paul Gazelka try to create similar conditions here with their attacks on the press and science and their elevation of lies to empty truths. We must resist this with all out capacities because it can happen here. But then, as a New Years resolution, we must commit to examining the possibility that Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Paul Gaelka are but extensions of ourselves. What is the nature of the isolated thought universe that we live in that, for example, has allowed us to permit our nation to persist in endless war in Afghanistan?
In 2019 we must examine what words that are supposedly at the heart of our beliefs that have actually lost all but ritualistic meaning. Do we have the intellectual tools and the cultural capacity to do that?
Tim
Central Minnesota Political
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