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Ahtman wrote:When I refer to Kovacs as a fascist I am doing so in the context of Alan Moore calling him a fascist.
Which is where we get into trouble with what fascist actually means. It's not a particularly well defined term.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Wrexasaur wrote:I know what you mean man, I simply could not keep my eyes off of the damn thing... all the other stuff tried to distract me... but to no avail, I had to see it, I had too... and it horrified me greatly.
Evidently you're not the only one bothered by Dr. Manhatten's glowing blue manhood......
Solve a man's problem with violence and help him for a day. Teach a man how to solve his problems with violence, help him for a lifetime - Belkar Bitterleaf
JohnHwangDD wrote:No, because you wouldn't ever attribute that to Hitler - if you knew your fascists, you'd correctly say that Mussolini kept the trains running on time.
...which he didn't actually do. This is a half remembered reference to him getting a single train to run on time to enable him to get to the capital to take power.
[hijack]
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
reds8n wrote:...which he didn't actually do. This is a half remembered reference to him getting a single train to run on time to enable him to get to the capital to take power.
[hijack]
Sort of, the fascists did make a big deal of building a rail network that was the envy of the world, as an example of the value of fascist super-efficiency. The trains did actually improve, as they were in a woeful state after WWI, but most of the work done to improve them was undertaken before Mussolini came to power. And while the train system improved, it was never that great.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2009/10/16 09:36:55
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
He did some work on the actual structure of the railway system itself, but there's no evidence that the actual punctuality improved at all.
And there is no shortage of witnesses to testify that even the tourist trains were often late. A Belgian foreign minister wrote: 'The time is no more when Italian trains run to time. We always were kept waiting for more than a quarter of an hour at the level-crossings because the trains were never there at the times they should have been passing.' The British journalist Elizabeth Wiskemann, likewise, dismissed 'the myth about the punctual trains'. 'I travelled in a number that were late,' she wrote.
The notion that the trains were running on time was none the less vigorously put about by the Fascist propaganda machine. 'Official press agents and official philosophers . . . explained to the world that the running of trains was the symbol of the restoration of law and order,' wrote Seldes. It helped that foreign correspondents in Rome were very carefully controlled and that the reporting of all railway accidents or delays was banned.
Il Duce himself never missed an opportunity to be associated with great public works, and railways were among his favourites. Whenever a big rail bridge, or a station or a new line was opened, he was there to take the credit. In 1934, with a triumphant fanfare, he opened the direct Florence-Bologna line which included 'the world's longest double-track tunnel'. He failed to point out that the project had been initiated by another government, long before he took power.
Typically, he fell victim to his own propaganda. Mussolini's biographer, Denis Mack Smith, points out that Italy usually imported its coal by sea, but after the Second World War broke out this was no longer possible and it had to come overland. The Duce's railway system, however, was not up to the job.
'Only two of the nine railroads through the Alps had been provided with double tracks and their capacity was estimated as equal to little more than a quarter of Italy's peacetime needs,' writes Mack Smith.
'As the trains running on time had become one of the accepted myths of Fascism, and as Mussolini had never charged anyone with the task of planning communications in the event of war, the matter had gone by default.'
...this is fething off topic even for us denizens of the OT board however....can we work gun ownership/abortion/creationism or dark eldar in here and finally complete the internet..?
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
..hmm... and we know they have odd religious beliefs too....there's now way they'd accept the divinity of Christ.....
..so they don't celebrate Xmas either.. even Hitler did that !
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
.
