Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 6/9/03: "Lenin was a bad man."

Jacob Lawrence, "Struggle No. 27," 1956 — Jacob Lawrence, *Struggle...From the History of the American People No. 27. ...for freedom we want and will have, for we have served this cruel land long enuff... —a Georgia slave, 1810* (1956)

June 9, 2003:

"Lenin was a bad man. He took away the people's freedom!" Where freedom is emphasized with an ascending note that rises toward a squeak.

Wiry-haired man, thin mustache streaked with dirty gray. Filmy off-blue eyes, not quite any color, not quite mobile, not quite focused on anything too much. Later middle age, second half of the fifties, maybe.

"Which freedom is that, exactly. The freedom enjoyed under the Czar?"

The eyes narrow into puzzled-looking points of not-blue. He doesn't understand the question. The question is a not-question, something which can't exist. And so his eyes take on the look of an old TV set that's been switched-off, fading into a final, failing point of luminance before disappearing into not-light.

There are two punchlines to this short story. First, his profession: public school teacher. Second, his specialization: history.

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Ideology is a type of story that makes the obvious invisible.

Americans are the most ideologized people in history.

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