02-28-2021, 11:56 PM
That's not the first thing that I notice with Rick Steves, as he generally seeks to show the brighter side of life in the scenic delights and such places as street cafes. Industrial Europe and America never were glamorous even when they were churning out the goods that gave workers a material quality of life that medieval aristocrats would have envied (except for the tiny flats and obligation to toil). Steel cities like Essen, Pittsburgh, Gary, and Birmingham (Alabama) were awful places.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.