General comment: Thank you SO much for the "book club." I can't keep up with you, but I read Orwell and Heller, both previously read 50+ years ago. Shocking to me that I remembered almost nothing about either. Except being left with permanent fear about totalitarianism. (Appropriate takeaway.) Without your prompting I would not have re-visited these books and I am so glad I did. Both are really different to me at 75 than they were at 13 and 20. Big lesson. I am so grateful to you both. And I do pray that Walter gets the Library of Congress job. We need a true protector of literature in charge.
Walter touched on something I've been thinking about for a while, namely, the impact that this grand hoax had on U.S.-Russia relations after 2016. This is a woefully underdiscussed aspect of this story. We know how much time (Mueller investigation, interruption of Trump's first-term agenda due to an imposed refocus) and money (again, Mueller investigation, legal fees for ensnared Trump people) were spent on this scandal. How would the U.S.'s relationship with Russia look had these time and money drains never happened? Maybe it would be every bit as contentious as it is today. But maybe it wouldn't.
General comment: Thank you SO much for the "book club." I can't keep up with you, but I read Orwell and Heller, both previously read 50+ years ago. Shocking to me that I remembered almost nothing about either. Except being left with permanent fear about totalitarianism. (Appropriate takeaway.) Without your prompting I would not have re-visited these books and I am so glad I did. Both are really different to me at 75 than they were at 13 and 20. Big lesson. I am so grateful to you both. And I do pray that Walter gets the Library of Congress job. We need a true protector of literature in charge.
Walter touched on something I've been thinking about for a while, namely, the impact that this grand hoax had on U.S.-Russia relations after 2016. This is a woefully underdiscussed aspect of this story. We know how much time (Mueller investigation, interruption of Trump's first-term agenda due to an imposed refocus) and money (again, Mueller investigation, legal fees for ensnared Trump people) were spent on this scandal. How would the U.S.'s relationship with Russia look had these time and money drains never happened? Maybe it would be every bit as contentious as it is today. But maybe it wouldn't.