Once you reach the point where life is severely degraded you’ve entered the threshold of Ivan Denisovich. The refusal to recognize the devastating nature of American capitalism on its lowest tier employees serves to make the reading of Solzhenitsyn exactly half as valuable. And I say half because there’s two lessons to be learned from Solzhenitsyn: 1) the value of perseverance and 2) the nature of oppression. Not understanding that the kitchen or factory or Walmart has become your gulag is to have completely missed the second point and undercuts the universality of the literature. It’s applicable to what I am witnessing. Our willingness to accept and recognize this horrific truth is to render Solzhenitsyn still relevant.
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