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Helen's avatar

Glad you didn't go on to give yourself an aneurysm. Those lists can certainly lead to apoplexy after a while.

I'm not so sure we aren't walzing into the GDR, actually. I have a lot of connections with that part of the world, and exactly what you describe at the end of this very good essay is what was perhaps most salient for many East Germans - having to say completely different things in public from at home and this being their normality. We can't be too careful about this, especially with the online safety bill having now passed into law.

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Bettina's avatar

Love that expression 'monastery of the mind'. So apt. Faced with arrant nonsense as the official narrative + the fact that there is such a thing as the 'official narrative', many of us have been forced to retreat into our individual monasteries to save our sanity in this Alice Through the Looking Glass world. Interactions with officialdom are like conversations with Tweedledum and Tweedledee and those in authority more and more begin to resemble the Red Queen "off with her head" in their arrant imbecility.

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