The Totalitarian Template on Letters of Thought

. . Or where the world gets its news.



In October, 2006 Mottel reads Gulag by Anne Applebaum . . .

In January 2006 Anne Applebaum reads Goodbye Saddam by Mottel . . .



The truth is, similarities in posts on the blogosphere have happened before, and to jump to conclusions can be rather hasty -It happened to I'm Ha'aretz, Ph.D. some time back.



But the similarity between the two posts is rather interesting . . . compare:



Mottel:

How many of the dictators that brought about such destruction in the world have been punished?
Hitler? He took his life in Berlin.
Mao? Stalin?
Arafat got state honors when he kicked the bucket in France.
Even Pinochet sat it out in jail until his heart went.
They all eluded justice.
Mussolini seems to be the only one in my books that got his just rewards . . .
Until now.
To think . . .
How rare is it, then, that a people can try and condemn their own dictator?
That we can hang Haman from his own gallows?

. . . But can't we loose our self-serving P.C. gloss, our narcissistic self pity, and for one moment see the picture as it is? . . .

Anne Applebaum:

Hitler shot himself before capture, Stalin received a grand state funeral, and Pol Pot died while under house arrest. In late December, the brutal leader of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, died of natural causes. In fact, when the noose tightened around his neck early Saturday morning, Saddam Hussein became one of a surprisingly small number of modern dictators actually executed by their own people: Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceausescu—and now the man who once called himself Iraq's president for life. Of those three, Saddam is the only one who had anything resembling a trial.



. . Even now, in the wake of his execution, our instincts are to argue about what Saddam meant to us, not what he meant to the Iraqis. His death is being analyzed for its impact on Iraq's civil war and therefore for its impact on our troops. The chaos of his trial and execution are another excuse to attack the White House. Write that Saddam really was an evil man, and you'll be thought an apologist for George Bush. Write that Saddam's regime resembled Stalin's, and you'll be called a right-wing ideologue.

As they say great minds think alike . . .
Her article is more then worth the read, I hope mine was as well . . .





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