I've been reading history, and pondering the cases of otherwise seemingly admirable persons, whether artists or other leading public figures, who have collaborated with regimes and movements that history has since judged abominable. And the stain of that clings to their lives and works.
And I have to be honest. I have to be frank with myself. I have noted within myself a certain moral weakness towards this sort of collaboration. When it comes right down to it, I know that I would collaborate with any regime - no matter how repugnant - that agrees to install me as their absolute and unquestioned tyrannical dictator.
But I'd trick 'em, you see. I'd be working from within, to subvert their repugnant cause. I'd work it in all subtle and stuff, between the lines of my screaming histrionics at the podium.
And I have to be honest. I have to be frank with myself. I have noted within myself a certain moral weakness towards this sort of collaboration. When it comes right down to it, I know that I would collaborate with any regime - no matter how repugnant - that agrees to install me as their absolute and unquestioned tyrannical dictator.
But I'd trick 'em, you see. I'd be working from within, to subvert their repugnant cause. I'd work it in all subtle and stuff, between the lines of my screaming histrionics at the podium.
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