{"id":19600,"date":"2017-10-04T00:43:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T06:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=19600"},"modified":"2017-10-04T08:17:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T14:17:22","slug":"sharing-a-cell-with-czech-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/10\/sharing-a-cell-with-czech-mate\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing a cell with Czech mate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Vaclav Havel<\/p><\/div>\n

Trying to understand America, I found myself in a prison cell in Czechoslovakia in 1978.<\/p>\n

Next to me was Vaclav Havel, writing an essay called \u201cThe Power of the Powerless.\u201d The latter word described Havel at the time, but within a few years he would lead the \u201cVelvet Revolution\u201d and become the first president of Czechoslovakia after communism failed. When the country split in two in 1993, Havel became the first president of the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

Before all of that, even before prison, Havel had been a playwright in the absurdist tradition. I once saw one of his plays performed; no fair asking what it was about. After the Soviet Union crushed Havel\u2019s native country in the \u201cPrague Spring\u201d uprising of 1968, Havel\u2019s plays were banned, and he spent five years in prison for spearheading a protest movement calling for human rights in Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n

So what was he doing writing away so cheerfully in a dank cell, years away from vindication and freedom? After all, I was turning to him in desperation, with far fewer worries on my plate, and a much larger plate. I was just feeling down because I heard the president say protesting football players should be fired and because I had been binge-watching Ken Burns\u2019 brilliant and depressing new documentary on the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

\"DC\"<\/a>

David Crisp<\/p><\/div>\n

It was a war we had lied our way into, and lied our way out of, and watching it all over again was so unpleasant that I had to quit for a few days. The final episodes wait on the DVR, both a reminder and a threat.<\/p>\n

Watching the news made me feel no better. As best I could tell, the 24-hour news channels for two solid days carried absolutely no news that wasn\u2019t about a record-setting mass murder in Las Vegas. I turn to the news to learn what Donald Trump is doing to ruin the country, and all TV will tell me is what mass murderers are doing to ruin the country.<\/p>\n

At least with Trump news, there\u2019s a chance that something good, or at least funny, will happen. Not so with mass murders. I won\u2019t turn on the news tomorrow and learn that all those bullets were filled with nothing but fake blood and some sort of long-acting anesthetic. Lester Holt won\u2019t tell me that all those people who got shot are feeling much better now and will soon be back on their feet.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s worse is thinking that wall-to-wall news coverage might be exactly what that murderer wanted, sort of a posthumous farewell gift from America. And I know that as a country we will do nothing to stop the next lone loser with record-setting mayhem in mind.<\/p>\n

For Americans, mass murder is just a routine natural disaster, like hurricanes. We won\u2019t try to stop mass murderers because that would require listening to evidence. We won\u2019t try to stop worsening hurricanes because that would require listening to science. And we won\u2019t try to understand protesters because that would require listening to each other.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Havel saw it all. Suppose a greengrocer puts a sign in his shop window saying \u201cWorkers of the world, unite,\u201d Havel wrote. Chances are he never thinks about the slogan or about the workers of the world. He places it there because the authorities told him to put it there. If he declines, he could get in trouble. It could hurt his business.<\/p>\n

It would be more truthful, Havel said, if the greengrocer put up a sign saying, \u201cI am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient.\u201d More truthful, but also more offensive. Putting it all on workers who, after all, might just as well unite allows the greengrocer to hide behind a high fa\u00e7ade of ideology.<\/p>\n

But, Havel argues, \u201cIdeology is a specious way of relating to the world,\u201d a veil that humans use to hide their \u201c\u2018fallen existence,\u2019 their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo.\u201d By accepting the ritual of ideology, the greengrocer becomes a player in the game and allows the game to go on.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman beings are compelled to live within a lie,\u201d Havel writes, \u201cbut they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way.\u201d The system alienates humanity, but alienated humanity supports the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life,\u201d Havel writes. \u201cThis is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Havel was writing about a nation under the yoke of a communist-dominated Soviet Union that had inherited the worst features of the Russian czars. Surely, none of that could apply to America, despite its growing tribalism, its ideology dwarfed by partisanship, the unwillingness of \u201cconsumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, Havel wasn\u2019t letting the Western world off the hook. Wasn\u2019t the grayness and emptiness of life under communism only \u201can inflated caricature of modern life in general?\u201d he wrote. \u201cAnd do we not in fact stand \u2026 as a kind of warning to the West, revealing to it its own latent tendencies?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Havel, I leave you to your cell. But I lock the door behind me wondering whether those football players kneeling in protest serve as a warning of their own, a warning that protesters serve the cause of liberty more honorably than those who think patriotism consists of placing into the window whatever sign of the day the authorities endorse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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