Meatspace,

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --

> > I find it much more plausible that commies did bad things, things
> > characteristic of commies, because they were bad people.

Faustine
> True: but then there's always the gray area of exactly what's done in the 
> name of "what bad people deserve" that keeps me uneasy about the whole 
> thing. Have you read Gordon Thomas' book about the Mossad, "Gideon's 
> Spies"? He was allowed to interview all the top agency people, so you can 
> be sure nothing got out the agency didn't want out. Even still, it's a 
> fascinating, hard-hitting look at what happens when an organization of 
> brilliant, ruthless people come to exist in a system with limited 
> accountability: hardcore realpolitik at its most elemental.

We know the spooks do bad things.  They have done bad things to people who post on this list.  We also know commies do bad things.

The argument I object to is that all the bad behavior, the authoritarianism, the crimes, the repression, that we saw from the new left during the seventies is somehow the fault of the spooks, and somehow not the fault of the people who were doing it.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     jPlXakhxGCRandRTr/nKWOWtDxJX5Ry/EdBKmGPk
     48oYFhL2YWrsHQTQ5bqQ6kvR/ZoWWOypTg9iDTuDD