05-11-2021, 11:39 AM
The father back the departure is from what happened in fact, the greater is the divergence from reality. This is as true in personal life as in world history. How different would the world be had it not been for the Bolshevik takeover of Russia? (Very much, I would say, as Fascism and National Socialism were in part reactions to Bolshevism). How different would the world be had someone been guarding the approach to the Presidential box at Ford's Theater? Huge in race relations, I would guess. Go back far enough and imagine the Carthaginians subduing the Romans. Then things get really strange.
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.