Word: totalitarian
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...matters not whether a nation as small and insignificant as El Salvador becomes communist or partially democratic. Yet to ignore ideology is to care little for one's own values. The human rights situation in Communist nations is appalling, as it is in many other countries. But no totalitarian regime has ever permitted a change of power, while many authoritarian government have done so--Argentina, Spain, and Greece are prominent examples. A communist El Salvador would never allow true elections; a formerly authoritarian El Salvador is holding them right...
...Reagan Administration was concerned with human rights. But publicly denouncing friends on questions of human rights while minimizing the abuse of those rights in the Soviet Union and other totalitarian countries was at an end. El Salvador, vital though the preservation of its democratic future is, represents a symptom of dangerous conditions in the Americas?Cuban adventurism, Soviet strategic ambition...
...does not sound like promising materal for comedy. But Fo has turned the event into fine and unlikely totalitarian farce. The central character is a sort of derelict loon who is a professional impostor. Fo took the part himself in the original Italian production, and, obviously, the Fool is essentially Fo. As wonderfully played at the Arena by Richard Bauer, the Fool behaves like Karl Marx masquerading as Dr. Hugo Hackenbush. He is what the Russians call a yurodivy, an elaborately disguised truth seeker, an anarchist-individualist working under deep cover...
...seem gross caricatures of a complacent elite, if they are characters in a satire their death in the thistle storm represents a sort of poetic justice. But the survival of some of the family by huddling close to the ground makes an allegorical point the cleverest way to weather totalitarian storms is to lay low and wait for them to pass over Donoso uses satire as a way of bringing out his allegory, but at times the two messages contradict each other almost as it the novel is questioning the validity of both device...
Throughout World War II and most of the postwar era there was still basic agreement on the moral imperative of defending freedom and the self-evident differences between totalitarian and democratic governments. But that broad consensus began to break down in the '60s and '70s. Partly in response to the Viet Nam tragedy, an era of paralyzing self-doubt ruled out just and legitimate uses of American power, even acts of self-defense...