I’m reading https://www.isabelallende.com/en/book/petal at the moment and it’s quite a journey
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…I’m 4/5 through Isabel Allende’s fictionalised account of the refugees who travelled to Chile on the Winnipeg in 1939 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Winnipeg, and the core message is that right wing fuckers fuck up everything again and again.
And they’re fucking it up again rn
…There’s a bit in the book where Isabel describes Victor Dalmau’s brutal ordeal in a Pinochet-era concentration camp and the description is very close to the illustration I quote-post-described here https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/115016272650720851
…My over-riding sense is that when in sufficiently large numbers we want more than any of us should have, we *inevitably* end up with a fuck tonne *less* than we deserve, under oppressive psychopaths.
So the best thing any of us can do in this perilous moment is to promote a conversation about what is *enough* and what happens when we get that wrong
…Last night I finished A Long Petal of the Sea, an extraordinary tale of two lives, in particular, lived through
- the Spanish Civil War
- finding safety and openness in Chile
- only for that to be crushed by Pinochet (backed by the US)
- escape to Venezuela
- and a return to Chile
And today I discover Bob, travelling through it, from whom I learn that yesterday was calendrically significant to Chile https://mastodon.world/@bobthetraveler/115074890520011475
…TIL that the narrowest bit of the Chilean mainland may only be about 9 miles wide.
Which would mean that the contiguous Chilean mainland has an aspect ratio of 272:1
…It’s a close run thing in the game of skinniest countries, though, because Norway is 1,090 miles top to bottom and there’s a bit of it that, depending on how you measure it, is only just over 4 miles wide.
@urlyman Won't those same oppressive psychopaths then just make sure that we get less than enough for as much profit as possible?