11
und
er Washington's rule, schooling the island's children in American
ideals, American memes. The Soviets seized Poland, Czechoslovakia
and East Germany. The commissars put the workers of these newly
"liberated" states through political indoctrination sessions every day
when work was over. They jailed those who disagreed with the new
official dogmas.19 Eventually the Soviet invaders shaped dependent
nations whose leaders turned to Moscow for all major opinions, and
whose goods streamed into the Soviet economy like blood cells flowing
from the hand to the heart. The Russians had fed entire new
populations to their meme. And the meme, in turn, had given the
Russians a reward--a dramatic increase of prestige and power.
At the center of each society is an imperious master--the meme.
The gunboats of 19th century America, the tanks of the Soviet Union,
and the armies of Islam were merely the arms through which a meme
reached out to grab fresh matter. They were the hands with which the
meme reshaped raw substance in its own peculiar way.
<< < GO > >>