06-24-2021, 02:44 AM
I have just been watching the movie The Watchmen, a dystopian scenario (Richard Nixon has won a third term under questionable circumstances after getting away with Watergate, and he has become extremely reckless in foreign policy. The backstory isn't clear to me -- how does America get that bad? America looks much like Michigan Avenue in Detroit, which is not to be confused with Michigan Avenue in Chicago or even neighboring Dearborn. I could live in Dearborn; I concur with the Islamic disdain for vice. Plenty of Christians and Jews go along with that. (In case you are unfamiliar with Michigan Avenue in Detroit, its only place of honor was old Tiger Stadium. The rest was a strip of sexually-oriented businesses and liquor stores, with addicts, drunks, whores, pimps, and johns to offend my sensibilities. I remember one marquee that proclaimed to offer "Sophisticated Adult Entertainment". There might be eastern Europeans there, but they are certainly not performing Rachmaninoff on the piano or Chekhov on the stage.
Go ahead and visit Dearborn. It has an impressive mosque and plenty of kebab houses. You can get a drink in a quiet bar. But if you go to Dearborn on Michigan Avenue (US 12), then stop short of the Detroit city limits.
Well, we have been spared a second term of you-know-who, and that would already be dystopian. There would already be a Stasi-like secret police well entrenched by now. I'm guessing that it would have a name such as "Patriotic Guard", and anyone who makes something unflattering out of the initials (PiGs) would do so at grave risk of anything valuable. America would likely be partners in crime with Russia and China. Political discussion would reduce to praise for the Great and Infallible Leader.
Go ahead and visit Dearborn. It has an impressive mosque and plenty of kebab houses. You can get a drink in a quiet bar. But if you go to Dearborn on Michigan Avenue (US 12), then stop short of the Detroit city limits.
Well, we have been spared a second term of you-know-who, and that would already be dystopian. There would already be a Stasi-like secret police well entrenched by now. I'm guessing that it would have a name such as "Patriotic Guard", and anyone who makes something unflattering out of the initials (PiGs) would do so at grave risk of anything valuable. America would likely be partners in crime with Russia and China. Political discussion would reduce to praise for the Great and Infallible Leader.
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.