> I think of the US as an essentially totalitarian country with a
> well-maintained democratic façade - which brings another Russian
> analogy, that of the Potemkin village, except much better executed.
> The
> US is essentially a Russia with money - the testimony of what money can
> do.
I'd be interested in your definition of "totalitarian." I think it has been pretty well established by now that this word is basically an ideological swear-word which is routinely hurtled at any government or social order one doesn't like and doesn't have any scientific use at all.
For one thing, I would have thought that if this were really a "totalitarian" state, this e-mail list would have been closed down and all of us thrown into the pokey some time ago. Or to put it another way, if the "democratic façade" is well enough maintained, I suppose it is no longer a façade.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.