Political memory
Political memory
Sir - I was saddened to learn of Margaret Thatcher's problems with her memory: it is reported (December 10) that, when she finishes a sentence, she cannot remember what she started talking about. This shows that she is in a far better state of health than the Prime Minister: he apparently can't remember a single word of his election manifesto.
Ian Dougall, Bournemouth, Hants
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The bloody trouble is we are only alive when we’re half dead trying to get a paragraph right. - Paul Scott
Re: Political memory
True, all through her career she showed a refreshing consistency in remembering her hatred for miners and the poor...
ah. edjecation, edjecation, edjecation, eh?
dolce decorum est pro patria mori
Re: Political memory
Luckily for everyone involded in Politics most citizens seem unable to remember these things either.
History is for the future not the past. The dead don't read.
Operam et vitam do Europae Barbarorum.
History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another. - Max Beerbohm
Re: Political memory
The problem is Blair remembers too much of the bad stuff in the manifesto...
GARCIN: I "dreamt," you say. It was no dream. When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.
INEZ: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of.
GARCIN: I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to - to do my deeds.
INEZ: One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else.
Jean Paul Sartre - No Exit 1944
Re: Political memory
Unfortunately this is the truth of almost all politicians.
Re: Political memory
Decline towards socialism? ahem... *gestures to numerous liberal/labour governments, the germination of various socialist doctrines + movements....*
dolce decorum est pro patria mori
Re: Political memory
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
Meh.. British politics. I have but one thing to say about your long decline towards socialism:
Ah yes the ever knowing white box with the red X. The symbol of socialism these days huh GC
There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
Re: Political memory
Funny that the "ultimate symbol of Socialism" is just Facism under a new name. Orwell was completely inept when it came to understanding political systems, as his view was skewed after fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Re: Political memory
Steady on. Orwell was one of the very few intellectuals on the left who had the vision and the courage to condemn Stalin and Stalinism. The left in the UK and the west was and IMHO to a degree still is profoundly tainted by its willful blindness to the evils of the soviet system, but Orwell stood out clearly against it.Orwell was completely inept when it came to understanding political systems, as his view was skewed after fighting in the Spanish Civil War
For this and other reasons he was a great man.
"The only thing I've gotten out of this thread is that Navaros is claiming that Satan gave Man meat. Awesome." Gorebag
Re: Political memory
No, my point is, he didn't see Socialism or Communism. What he saw was a mix of military Juntas and anarchy. Besides, the leftists found themselves under attack just as often by their fellow Republians as the Nationalists- often, the socialist soldiers were sent forward first in an attack, so that the other Republicans could take potshots at them. (That happens to be from a primary source, a very old Frenchman who fought for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.)
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