Word: revell
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...First he dismisses ferment in the rest of the world with some biased sleight of hand. He rejects the African nations because they seek out their non-colonial heritage. Therefore they are inevitably counter-revolutionary. He discounts the People's Republic of China as an irrelevant agrarian nation. For Revel political democracy is absolutely essential, economic equality relatively unimportant. Socialist states, including anything from Sweden to the Soviet Union, disqualify themselves because they are anti-democratic one way streets. He considers Western Europe culturally unimaginative and ideologically misdirected...
...Revel's elusive rhetorical techniques prohibit refutation of his conclusions. Because he claims his arguments are intuitively obvious, his sloppy syllogisms cannot support controversy. He has found a disconcerting way of stating his views at the start of a chapter, and then discussing whatever occurs to him. Suddenly the word "therefore" appears, and Revel blithely announces he has made his point and he claims only foolish French leftists would disagree. I suppose this tone is meant to be audacious and amusing, but I did not laugh...
...Revel rumbles on his major interest emerges: France is what concerns him, especially the complacent lethargy of her leftists. Revel devotes a third of the book to the radicals, alleging they wish to remain out of power. His references to the Pompidou-Poher presidential campaign point out a stunning disinterest in practical politics and constructive action on the part of the left. He also exposes the naivete with which French leftists view America. He ridicules students' surprise that auto-workers are not starving and berates a radical journalist who comments. "'In the United States Mr. Nixon's only serious rival...
Ironically his attack on simplistic French attitudes precedes his own incredibly facil analysis of the United States. Without Marx or Jesus hardly bothers with American society. It is relegated to a series of confused vignettes supposedly confirming Revel's thesis. Witness: Leonard Bernstein's Black Panther cocktail party demonstrates a great depth of revolutionary commitment; the opposition to the "no knock" search law shows the growth of civil libertarianism; the movie of The Strawberry Statement indicates artistic fervor; the Hare Krishna Society and the Jesus freaks glow with revolution; and so do all students, all women, all liberals...
...Revel's rose-colored glasses have thick distorting lenses through which he sees what he wishes, not what exists. He handles his analysis of the United States by waving the stars and stripes and bellowing. "See, I told you it's red." Everything he witnesses walks a leftist path. His inability to acknowledge the traditional strength of American conservatism ruins his argument. For him the country consists of the Black nation, the Woodstock nation, the Wallace nation, and the liberals. But Woodstock was not the radical political convention that Revel calls it. Nor have dissenters forced the United States...