Ok, so after several weeks of not getting an answer to my query for my password, and having my server not work on me, I decided to start over, and use my previous blog as an archive. If you are visiting me for the first time, by all means click the link to Progressive Christian to find out what you are in for.
I guess I will have to start all over building a readership, if I even had one, so expect quite a bit of blogging over the next few days. I thought I would start with something I just heard on NPR. NPR ran a story on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and at the end of the story played a clip from Kruschev's audio memoirs in which the Ukranian strongman voiced regret at the role he played in banning the novel and harrasing Pasternak. Now, a cynical person might suggest that, as Kruschev was receving much the same treatment as Pasternak had, the regret was too little too late, motivated less by real regret and more by self-pity. I would agree that such might actually play a part in some of what Kruschev was feeling to motivate such a regret. Such questions and assertions are really unanwerable and so uninteresting. We can speculate for quite a while as to the "why" of such a statement, but if nothing else it reveals that Kruschev was less of an ideologue than his public persona projected. In humanizing the director of the starvation of his fellow Ukranians, it at least offers the thin hope of redemption for one guilty of a heinous crime against humanity.
My thought upon hearing Kruschev voice such a thought was this: Would our current President, in a fit of self-reflection not normally considered part of his personality, voice regret at the waste of life and national treasure and resources and political capital for the horrendous act of stupidity in Iraq? Someday may we be treated to the dulcet tones of George W. Bush saying, "You know, invading Iraq was perhaps the single most horrific decision of my life, and I regret it now"? Can we expect our leaders to become as human as a former Soveit premiere?
