And I am struck by the overall level of childishness which characterizes so many of those who have taken it upon themselves to repeat the days propaganda, and to attempt to silence through attack all who disagree with it.
And surveying this landscape, what I realize is it is characterized by a very visceral terror that conservatives are right, and that a principle purpose in life is accepting and developing the ability to be accountable to oneself and others. This thought terrifies them. It requires psychological maturation. It requires dealing with emotional problems they don’t want to deal with.
In Lenin’s time it was possible to believe that a new and better society could be built through terror and science. It was never a humanism. It was never Liberal in any respect whatever, but the experiment had not been tried on as grand a scale as he attempted. They had far, far more time than the French ever had.
What happened, of course, was that Lenin was far worse than Czar Nicholas II in every possible way. Mao was far, far worse than Chiang Kai Shek. Ho Chi Minh was far, far worse than the French or Japanese. Castro was far, far worse than Battista. Etc. It is a dull drill, and a series of facts lost only on who? The terrified.
For the sufficiently emotionally disconnected, it is possible to nurture a belief that OUT THERE somewhere is the answer to all their problems, and that it is possible in the meantime to join a cult which will tell them what to do, what to say, what to think, and which promises to never, ever ask them to be responsible adults. This reassures them.
These people are out there in droves. They swarm on the internet like gnats. They reinforce one another. They reassure one another.
And for the power elite, they have their uses.