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Autocratic, demagogue, dictatorial regimes always depend on massive lying.

The lies always fit labels for nefarious "others," always other groups, as if we can only live life by seeing groups-only and accompanying scripted slogans only.

This of course forecloses on any schools ever teaching any real humanities, where things get messy with characters having nuances, contradictions, complicated history, and other contingencies.

So is it a sign of today's world, mostly run by billionaires, that schools around the world debase to the vulgarity of the rich? Or debase to the parallel vulgarity of religious packagers of hate and resentment?

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“Autocratic, demagogue, dictatorial regimes always depend on massive lying.” True, but usually they are not believed, so they depend even more on terror and arbitrariness. Their effect on the truth is to make everything and everyone suspect.

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Depends, Sophie.

If people have upbringing for decency -- which includes interests in artists who can see better than us -- people will have independence from the liars and the vulgar.

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"...the parallel vulgarities and religious packagers of hate and resentment"

SPOT ON!!

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Or the distraction of celebrity culture.

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You often generalize to all schools. My granddaughter recently told me "I still take humanities," when I asked her if she knew what it was.

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Let's measure in application, Kathy.

Many "know" humanities as exotic, marginalized, decorative-only -- and have also learned that one never uses any, never cites any apropos of anything.

Even on Heather's site here, please count how often any citations of any novels, memoirs, films, songs, or other arts.

If we're honest, more of us would feel like Doctor Zhivago in "The Forest Brotherhood" chapter where, abducted by a partisan group and forced to serve as its doctor, he's also forced continuously to hear nothing but the banalities of slogans, abstractions, and other wonk language of that time.

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