Word: communisme
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...style of Ionesco or Pinter or Beckett. An attitude of surrealist paranoia turned out to be the right moral optic through which to see the Communist world clearly, and Havel had keen eyesight. Constricted as a playwright, he became a dissident. Imprisoned as a dissident, he became a symbol. Communism was brutal and stupid and corrupt. Havel was Czechoslovakia with brains -- the country's better self, its idealist, its moral philosopher, the visionary of "living in truth." When the Communist state fell away in November 1989, it made some giddy, noble sense to install Havel as the first President...
...imminent danger of nationalistic and ethnic conflict. In some cases nations were not able to search freely for and find their own identity and form of statehood and gain their independence for tens or even hundreds of years. We cannot be surprised that now, when the straitjacket of communism has been torn off, all the countries wish to establish their independence and self-determination...
...that the cold war is over, one can sometimes hear diplomats gently rue its passing: communism was terrible, but at least you knew where you stood. Yitzhak Rabin's first days as Israel's Prime Minister have put Arabs and Palestinians in a similar bind. He has yanked open the door to serious negotiations against which they had been pushing, only to find them in a tangled heap on the floor, their muscles stiff and unprepared for a vigorous pas de deux...
Despite the strictures, it was not until the cold war that amateurism became hotly debated, largely because of the biggest circumvention of the code. Soviet bloc nations, aiming to demonstrate communism's superiority, poured resources into state-run training programs and put athletes on state payrolls, calling them teachers, soldiers or commissars while paying them to play full time...
Much of this is posturing and requires no more courage than it takes to stand up in a VFW hall and condemn communism or crack. Yes, Cop Killer is irresponsible and vile. But Ice-T is as right about some things as he is righteous about the rest. And ultimately, he's not even dangerous -- least of all to the white power structure his songs condemn...