Sunday, February 27, 2005
Did we really win?
Yesterday I picked up at a secondhand bookstore a translation of a book written by two Soviet intellectuals in 1960, chronicling a trip they had made to the northeast United States. It had an introduction by the translator (c.1963) making it clear in no uncertain terms that it was SOVIET PROPAGANDA and lots of footnotes pointing out all the factual inaccuracies in the authors' claims. The weird thing was that except for occasional over-the-top rhetorical flourishes, the book read pretty much like any random article you might find in the Australian press today. And despite my prejudices, I found myself distrusting the footnotes more than the text...
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2 comments:
Wellll.... There was an ideological war going on, and both "sides" were equally capable of massaging the facts for their own biased spin, until nobody could really tell any semblance of fact at all.
You'll be glad to know that I have found where the new issues of the Economist are kept at work, so you can expect me to more knowledgeably discuss its contents in future!
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