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August 1, 2012
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?"Posted by gerardvanderleun at August 1, 2012 12:15 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
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The rest of that quote:
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If… if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ……….. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward. – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918 – 1956
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at August 1, 2012 2:59 AM
I just wish someone would tell me who they think it is that is going to rescue us or is going to step in and prevent what is coming, making our action unnecessary? The people in power are less and less even pretending to play by the rules, and we do nothing. What exactly did the House majority do when Obama illegally appointed officials? What did the House majority do when they could have prevented most Obama spending by leaving the debt ceiling in place? They converted that power into massive and automatic Defense cuts. WTF!!
I can tell you what the GOP voters did. They nominated Thurston Howell III and later decided he's going to become The Terminator. We take every opportunity to short-circuit the mildest conflict and then pretend the next event is where we will make hard choices. We've not learned one damn thing since too many pretended GHW Bush was the man with the plan. Men like Karl Rove make a living, ON OUR SIDE OF THE AISLE, selling the same overly-cooperative agenda. If you aren't spitting mad at Karl Rove for not noticing in 8 years the angry demands from us to fight back, you have no memory. If you are stupid enough to watch the FOX News hand job they give Rove the 9 times per week he is invited on I have no use for you. You can't support people just because they self-identify as on our side. You have to make judgments and stop looking for shortcuts.
Posted by: Scott M at August 1, 2012 3:52 AM