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Sedgwick C. Hartung's avatar

A self-described communist I met had a younger brother whose middle name was, "Countway, as in Countway Library at Harvard Medical School", he smugly said.

At that moment, I realized why so many well-fed Americans who never worked in Romanian salt mines as children self-describe as "communist", or "socialist".

It helps them to feel edgy, exotic, creative, intelligent, brilliant, fascinating, special -- everything they are not.

Edit: Being *both* a communist *and* a member of the Countway family "distinguished" the above undergrad from his peers and satisfied his conversational goals, which explains why he failed to notice his hypocrisy.

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