Rats Fleeing the Sinking Ship

[GMDino]

I was is HS in 1984 so they made us read it.  It was okay.  I was probably too naive to think about real world implications then and it was more just "torture porn" for parts.

But we are not living in 1984.

In the post-Stalin, post-Khrushchev USSR, the Party had lost all ideological conviction and was completely exhausted and bereft of any dynamism. (Sound familiar?) The only thing left was Party solidarity and loyalty to the leader. (Sound familiar?) /2

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 14, 2021

 

If you toed the line, kissed the leader's ass, and repeated the Party's formulations, you had a good life: Awards, money, living quarters. (Sound familiar?) If you questioned things or became unorthodox in any sense, you were denounced and sent into a career dead end. /4

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 14, 2021

This all holds true until The Leader, whoever it is, starts to lose a grip on power through ill health or major ****-ups or both. Then the rats start making plans and forging new alliances. But ideas, concepts, the national interest? No one cares about that. It's survival. /6

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 14, 2021

 

So, way to go, @GOP. You've become the Brezhnev-era Communist Party, only led by careerist non-entities who are less adept at policy, more prone to drama, and who hate American democracy more than Brezhnev did. Take a bow, comrades. /7x

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 14, 2021