An acquaintance of mine was telling me yesterday all about his experience with communism. He grew up in communist Poland and managed to escape when he was fairly young (his sister came later, mother not).
Here are a couple of interesting bits of emphasis he put on his experiences and those of his family:
Ah, political season is clearly here.
Reminds me of the ol’ JibJab video of Kerry and Bush last time around. A wee bit of criticism for this one: there are some parts where it’s hard to make out what they’re saying.
This video touches on a lot of critical ideas that seem to be missing from the politics of today. I think a lot of people who consider themselves educated haven’t really considered this perspective very seriously.
Excerpt:
Professor Friedman let me ask you what may turn out to be a long and rather convoluted question. You’ve said [...]
Some reasons not to vote for either of the major presidential candidates this year:
War. This was the one reason I considered supporting Obama after Ron Paul dropped out. I figured a strong anti-war stance was the most important issue to me. Since then I’ve discovered: Obama has voted repeatedly to fund the war in Iraq. [...]
confused. unable to make decisions. think i can make a decision, but then when that decision leads to the next decision, i’m frozen again. stuck, frozen. don’t know what i want. can see many possibilities, but don’t know which road to take. limbo.
the world won’t wait for me to make up my mind. if i [...]
I’ve had this backpack since high school. It’s had zipper problems for over a year, and now it’s worn a hole through the bottom. I guess this probably seems trivial to most people — throw it out and get a new one. But that’s not something that I do very often with my personal stuff. [...]
that’s right, 36 pounds of it! my tummy hurts just thinking about it (or is that from the gigantic bowl I just finished eating..?)
5000 bucks will buy you 7-8 minutes of zero gravity via parabolic flight. Neat.
are you ready to go crazy? what does that mean? how about letting go of your inhibitions and letting the nonsense that’s inside flow on out? you’re just a transient quantum energy bubble anyway, so why take yourself so seriously? your existence is because of a whole bunch of random events. logic and reason make [...]
I’m no liberal, and yet. It is imperative that you see this: