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other thoughts

Modern Times

[Today’s run: 3.5 miles]

After starting a few months ago, a good run at it, a halt for awhile, I am now closing in on finishing the book Modern Times by Paul Johnson.  The subtitle is:  “The World from the Twenties to the Eighties”.

Copyright is 1983, so it comes to an end before the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall.

The world went through a lot of trouble in the 1900’s.  I’m not a political scientist, but a lot of it seems to root in Darwin, come through Lenin,  be perfected in Stalin and Hitler and made prosaic with Mao, the Kims of North Korea, and Pol Pot.  There is no “divine right of kings”, just the most ruthless who can get to the top and keep their spot by manipulating public opinion.  Before the first half of the century was over there was already an understanding of how it worked as in Orwell’s 1984.