History, through the looking glass

One of my newfound joys is taking dry saunas. The community center near our house has a great cedar steam room, and I've taken a cotton to going there once or twice a week and sweating for an hour. It's typically not that crowded, 3 or 4 others, and the conversations are usually pleasant and informed. It obviously draws the hippie crowd, so the conversation often draws towards spiritual matters, but it often happens in a thoroughly engaging and, if I may be so bold, enlightening manner. I suppose it's another one of the reasons I enjoy the experience.

Yesterday was not one of those days. The Saturday afternoon crowd (there were eight of us cooped up in there) had elements of the not that interesting (the middle-aged hippie woman interspersed awkwardly timed "humorous observations" between her "fer sures") and of the "other side."

For example, I learned that, given British financial support to the Bolshevik movement and for Sun Yat-Sen, the WWII Alliance between the Soviets and the West, and the fact that Karl Marx was buried in London, all pointed to the fact that Great Britain was the de facto home of the COMINTERN (or some such leap). Moreover, according to "the encyclopedia," "communism" is like an English workhouse - which I assume means dark, dank, and thoroughly soul-crushing - and therefore, since this has to be common knowledge because it's in the encyclopedia, why would anyone openly advocate for such a system? C'mon! These are well known facts!

I also heard that Mao Tse-Tung had all the intellectuals killed; I'm willing to forgive this one because I think the gentleman was probably confusing him with Pol Pot. Mao just shipped most of the intellectuals to workfarms in the hinterlands. What else... the Bolshevik mobs in 1917 executed people because they were college educated and therefore smarter than the stupid Reds, and were thus a danger. I was always under the impression that it was because they were members of the aristocracy and their enabling allies in the middle class.

But that's just me.

Oh, and Peak Oil is just a media scam to manipulate the price of oil. And SUVs aren't dangerous vehicles compared to 4WD pick-ups that'll roll for lookin' at 'em wrong, and you don't hear anyone in the media talking about that, do ya?

So I think I'll shoot for a different time for my sweats on Saturdays.