Quotable Quote
by Francisco Toro on January 29, 2010 - 10:22pm
"Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense."
-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
[I'm re-reading this now, and while chavismo is much closer to Arendt's idea of dictatorship than to her much more radical understanding of totalitarianism - a term she reserved for what Stalin and Hitler did after they had crushed any semblance of organized opposition - some of her quotes about the latter definitely spark that flash of recognition...]
Kepler
Francisco Toro
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viva chavez
power cut in valencia at the bottom of the ninth in the national baseball grand final.
viva chavez
Impulsive and insensitive?
The UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner has found that, in many social situations, people with power act just like patients with severe brain damage. "The experience of power might be thought of as having someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to empathy and socially-appropriate behavior," he writes. "You become very impulsive and insensitive, which is a bad combination."
(from Jonah Lehrer)
While Quico is re-reading Arendt
Hugo of Sabaneta is trying to read one of Lenin's books (as mentioned in the last cadena), "What is to be done" or, more probably, "State and Revolution". After 2 hours Hugo will have a dumb and abandon the book on the floor of the toilet.
It will be there for days because the service staff will be afraid of putting it back on the book shelves
- less Hugo may want to pick it up again in moments of need - but after a day or two Hugo or his daughter will shout at them to keep order in house.
Hugo will discuss for some minutes "the content" with one of those core chavi-commies who are providing him with the "intelectual support" (now it is not Barreto, as he is hibernating). Because HUgo did not understand most of the rather esoteric ideas proposed by Lenin, he will just conclude "he will do a really different thing".
And then his sycophants will say: "los consejos, Hugo, recuerda los consejos comunales, y el partido va a controlar los consejos y tú al partido".
And Hugo will look at them, think about taking a new coffee, and reply: "Sí, hermano, los consejos, bajo mi comando, que soy el Pueblo. Jefe es jefe. Esto va a ser una revolución bonita. Vamos a reinventar el mundo" and then he will get his coffee from Juanita. He will tell her something about her dress, the yellow colour and something about Indians and black slaves and she will feel happy...or perhaps not.
Meanwhile, the ones who thought to control the beast, the communists who remained in the Pcv, are having a big big identity problem. Look at this, please:
http://el-nacional.com/www/site/p_contenido.php?q=nodo/120122/Nacional/P...
Eichmann
Good call. Looking forward to your quotes. I wrote something on the "banalisation of evil" in Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem":
http://li.co.ve/MF
We read's each other