Letter to the Editor: Terrifyingly vivid
BY John Schwane, Tulsa
Friday, November 16, 2012
11/16/12 at 2:28 AM
The topsy-turvy of contemporary life needs the wisdom of the last generation, first, from England, Malcolm Muggeridge ("Living Through an Apocalypse"), and second, from Washington, Charles Colson ("Watergate or Something Like It Was Inevitable").
Muggeridge: "The most pessimistic attitude anyone could possibly take today would be to suggest that a way of life based on materialist values, on laying up treasure on Earth in the shape of an ever-expanding Gross National Product, and a corresponding ever-increasing consumption stimulated and fostered by the fathomless imbecilities of advertising, could possibly provide human beings with a meaningful basis for existence.
"Western Man has decided to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania; and, having convinced himself that he is too numerous, laboring with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Finally, having educated himself into stupefaction, he keels over, a weary, battered old brontosaurus."
Colson: "The parallels in this country right now with the conditions in the Weimar Republic in pre-Hitler days are terrifyingly vivid. It would be the easiest thing in the world for a demagogue of the left or the right to come in and sweep the country if he had a charismatic personality; if he could promise people that he was going to solve all the ills of our society and gave them hope."
On Nov. 6, for what were people voting?
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