#authoritarian government
Historic Photographs
The full Tiananmen Square Massacre ‘Tank Man’ photo, is more powerful than the cropped version.
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“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide.”
…
“I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong – and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made the System.”
Haruki Murakami, The Novelist in Wartime: a short speech in which Murakami explains his decision to accept a literary prize in Jerusalem during Israel’s military operation in Gaza…and why we need to fight the System. Worth reading in full.
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NEVER FORGET ABOUT 2020 LOCKDOWNS.
The more I think about the 2020 “lockdowns” the angrier I get. Hospitals were nowhere near being overwhelmed. The course of the virus was not altered. People giddily lined up for their to-go cocktails, placed their grocery delivery orders, and thought they were saving lives.
Many people I know permanently lost their businesses, careers, bands, self-respect, health, life savings. Some committed suicide. Some have children now years behind in their education. All for nothing. So the upper middle class could LARP “pandemic” and bake bread at home.
The service industry lost their shirts, or continued to work serving those who thought they were morally superior because they can send emails from a laptop on the couch. “Safety” became contingent on the neuroticisms of the most sheltered. The working class kneeled.
Primary care and the basic health needs of society dropped off a cliff. ERs became family doctors as family doctors insisted they only see patients virtually. Covid myopia buried all rationality. And what we got is a society now coming apart at the seams.
I’ll never forget the shoddy journalism, corporatism, bogus Government programs, decisive separation of people and political spectrums, and the politics that went into the pandemic to make it happen.
It was all theater.
