Mortmain

I was going through my email and found a Wordsmith.org that really hit home. As I often do I saw a connection with another interesting item:  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52583322

So I thought I would write an entry on it.

USAGE:
“If the corona curves continue to crest, Covid-19 might expose as much about the dead hand of capitalism (the corruption, the hubris, the greed) as Chernobyl ever did about communism.”
Ben Schott; Diary; The Spectator (London, UK); Apr 4, 2020.

As we were driving to the airport this morning my daughter and I talked and I remarked how truth is so much stranger than fiction. She had said my son-in-law wants to read some World War Two stuff and being interested in that subject I talked about a few of my favorite books. She asked me to give examples and I mentioned Audie Murphy being akin to Captain America in the movie.

There was so much about the twentieth century that has, so far, in comparison made the 21st fairly dull. If any one man could be said to have saved the world from totalitarianism in my view it would be codebreaker Alan Turing. Although a movie was made about him recently I do not believe it was very popular compared to superhero franchises so he is still relatively unknown. He was arrested for essentially being homosexual after the war and ended committing suicide. Audie Murphy did better and while he and several other future movie stars who fought in the war suffered PTSD he not only had a movie made about him but he starred in it and went on to make westerns- though he never did as well as John Wayne (who did not fight).

And while everyone remembers John Wayne not many know who Audie Murphy was.

And then there was Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who toured the U.S. as a war hero and was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the real-life Black Widow, except they did not call her that- they called her “Lady Death.” Though I have never read anything about her and our Captain America ever meeting. Nobody remembers her except history buffs like me because we became enemies with Russia and true feminists like Lyudmila were just not talked about.

What is interesting about all of this is the “dead hand” of capitalism in the 21 century after it conquered the world in the 20th. The Nazis, the Communists, and…those New Deal Democrats in a racist America who were, in a sense, a diluted mixture of both. The Neoliberals finally took over around 1980 and for the last 40 years the cult of Mammon has ruled this planet. It was not John Wayne that converted the world, it was another actor. He did not fight either.

And here we are with a reality TV star in charge. He did not fight either.

Truth is absolutely stranger than fiction.