I'm very ignorant about history, generally. It's only in the last few years I've come to find it interesting.
Anyway, we were staying in this holiday cottage, and there were some books in there, as there often are. These were intended only for decoration, I think. Mostly volumes of an ancient encyclopedia, plus a book called "handbook of Marxism", which I began to read. It was condensed extracts from the writings of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, etc.
Reading a particular piece by Lenin, on tactics for overthrow of democracy in the UK, what struck me was how biblical it seemed. In the Bible, not that I'm all that familiar, I believe there is this tone where, after the resurrection and the ascent of Jesus to heaven, they believe he's going to come again, to rule the world, judge everyone, etc etc, and they think it's going to be pretty soon. Like, he's just popped home to get some things sorted out, but he'll be back in a few weeks. Certainly within their lifetimes. (Someone tell me if I'm all wrong about this).
Then later, it gets changed to the current view, where this is all going to happen way way in the future, and anyone who talks about the end of the world happening soon is a nutter.
Anyway, the Marxist thing seemed just the same. The revolution had happened in Russia, and Lenin was writing about how it would happen everywhere. And because of conditions in Russia, it had taken 15 years there, but it would be much faster in (for example) England. They expected it to be happening almost at once. Whereas, I think now, the standard Marxist view is that it's inevitable and guaranteed, but may be after a very long time, maybe not in our lifetimes, and we all need to work towards it.
I've taken to having breakfast every day in "Cafe Mad", really called "Casa Madeira", a lovely Portuguese cafe near my work.
I think breakfast is the best meal of the day to eat out. It's the time of day I can least be bothered to cook for myself; the food is cheaper, for some reason; and there's no expectation that I'll buy a bottle of wine marked up 300%.
It's the perfect start to my day, sitting in this lovely cafe, friendly waiter service, watching the world rush by, reading my book or doing the crossword, with a cup of decent coffee (good enough to be worth drinking black) and reminding myself that people who eat breakfast are generally healthier. And there's always space for a whole table to myself. Life doesn't get better than this! Ahhhhh
I've noticed recently a tendency amongst people on RW to slag off "Daily Mail readers". I'm not a Mail reader myself; in fact, I tend not to read any newspaper, other than the crossword and horoscope parts and "Nemi".
I just find it amusing and paradoxical (those two often go together) that people I count as friends, and who regard themselves as liberal in orientation, react like this. They decry the Daily Mail for its racism and classism and general prejudice -- perhaps rightly so! They decry, for example, its anti-immigration stance. (For the record, I am anti-anti-immigration, of course, as I believe in free trade).
But in decrying not only the Mail, but "Daily Mail readers" as a generic collection of bad people, they are committing exactly the same fallacy. Lumping a highly diverse group of people together as if they were all the same, and deriving pleasure from labelling them as the bad people.
People who would pronounce themselves totally and committedly against "racism", for example, often seem happy to apply huge generalisations to "Americans". They can't see that it's the same dangerous thought pattern. Or they will apply a description to "bankers" and "top bosses" (they all look out for each other, they're rich and greedy, they pull the strings of the government behind the scenes...) which are exactly the same things the Nazis said about the Jews.
"But this time it's true!" they all say.
(Late breaking story from John Matthews: the proportion of Americans (boo, insular!) without passports is roughly equivalent to the proportion of Europeans (yay, cosmopolitan, accepting) who've never been outside Europe.) LOL. Thanks John.
Yeah, sure, you're dead against repeating the mistakes we made in the past: stereotyping women, black people, jews, gays.... But are you against stereotyping? Of Daily Mail readers? Do you fight vigorously against that whenever you see it? Or do you join in with the crowd like a sheep?
