Political quotes

[The Whispering Monk]

...When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

- Abraham Lincoln, 1855

I always felt Lincoln had way with words.

 

[Yinko]

From Don Calacho, Nicolás Gómez Dávila

It is not just that human trash accumulates in cities—it is that cities turn what accumulates in them into trash.

The modern metropolis is not a city; it is a disease.

In the modern state there now exist only two parties: citizens and bureaucracy.

Fashion, even more than technology, is the cause of the modern world's uniformity.

Ever since Wundt, one of the classic places of "disguised unemployment" is the experimental psychology laboratory. (🔥)

A bureaucracy ultimately always ends up costing the people more than an upper class.

Where the law is not customary law, it is easily turned into a mere political weapon.

Trying to "promote culture" while recommending the reading of "national authors" is a contradictory endeavor.

"To have faith in man" does not reach the level of blasphemy; it is just one more bit of stupidity.

The people is sometimes right when it is frightened; but is always wrong when it becomes enthusiastic.

Monarchs, in almost every dynasty, have been so mediocre that they look like presidents.

The results of modern "liberation" make us remember with nostalgia the abolished "bourgeois hypocrisies."

Everything that can be reduced to a system ends up in the hands of fools.

The majority of the tasks that this century's typical ruler believes he is obliged to assume are nothing more than abuses of power.

Human warmth in a society diminishes by the same measure that its legislation is perfected.

 

[Bassoe]

I thought it was the leaders, the nations, the corporations, the elites, who were out of touch, who didn’t understand the gravity of our situation. I believed in the sincerity of their stupid denials - of global warming, of resource depletion, of nuclear proliferation, of population pressure. I thought them stupid. But if you judge them by their actions instead of their rhetoric, you can see they understood it perfectly and accepted the gravity of it very early. They simply gave it up as unfixable. Concluded that law and democracy and civilization were hindrances to their continued power. Moved quite purposefully and at speed toward this dire world they foresaw, a world in which, to have the amenities even of a middle-class life - things like clean water, food, shelter, energy, transportation, medical care - you would need the wealth of a prince. You would need legal and military force to keep desperate others from seizing it. Seeing that, they moved to amass such wealth for themselves as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, with the full understanding that it hastened the day they feared.

Militarized robots are the anti-guillotine. They’re the final solution to the ancient “there are a lot more of us than there are of our rulers” problem. Everyone with wealth and power has been eyeing their incremental rollout with intense interest while trying to play it cool.

So many emerging technologies would be cause for celebration if our rulers weren’t so damn evil and our systems weren’t so damn oppressive. In a healthy society we’d be celebrating automation and AI giving us more and more abundance and free time; instead we’re terrified of police robots and technocratic dystopia.

The knitting of neurology and technology would have incredible implications if we didn’t know sociopathic intelligence agencies would immediately insert themselves into the use of those technologies. Virtual reality would be awesome if it wasn’t going to be used to create fake worlds for people to purchase fake goods in so that capitalism can continue expanding while we destroy the real world.

Futurists correctly predicted many of the innovations we’re seeing today, but what they generally didn’t predict was that those technologies would be used to give the powerful more power while everyone else continues to flounder and struggle in a profoundly unjust civilization.

What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? Or if during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

 

[King Krávoka]

Seminal fluid turns out to be ideal culture media. It has a fairly neutral pH and it's chock-full of carbs. Bacteria love it, and they splash around with sperm in the same fluid. It's an open question how much these bacteria contribute to your future microbiota. There is telling evidence of a connection between the seminal microbiota and the vaginal microbiota of sexually active couples, and this may be one way a father can pass down his microbiota to his children.

~ Scott C. Anderson

 

[Elenor6]

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself. Mark Twain

 

[Bassoe]

World War 3 totally does not have to happen, you know that right? All of the death, misery, destruction that is coming, totally and absolutely does not need to happen.

You realize that all the bullshit going on right now in the world is caused by like a few hundred politicians and elites. You, me, us, we literally do not want this or need it. Imagine a high-school gymnasium filled with students and there are about 10 students that are stirring up shit for the entire gym.

Why do we never just fuck up the 10 students, why do we always allow them to cause the entire mass of us misery?

Just imagine it, everything going on and all we have to do is say no.
Politician- "You police, go and do this thing because I command it!"

Police- "No."

Politician- "You, soldier go and kill these people because we command it."

Soldier- "No."

Politicians- "what? We pay you, we will have you arrested!"

Us- "Its our money you pay us with, and everyone who would arrest us is on our side, fuck off, we're arresting you."

It all ends right there, just like that, just that easy. There really isn't much to it.

 

[DarthOne]

Except given what we saw during Covid and the George Floyd riots, the continuing tyranny through the West by police on behalf of their paymasters, it’s not going to be nearly that one sided. At least not with the police and I doubt the military will be any easier.

 

[Zachowon]

The military is actually the easiest to prevent from helping. When vast majority will not even consider being used against the US populace just due to the nature of which things are.
We would prefer to just lock down and stay out of it.

Unless the president calls for the use of the Insurrection Act, or Martial law.
But even then, it will not be a unified military

 

[DarthOne]

The military is actually the easiest to prevent from helping. When vast majority will not even consider being used against the US populace just due to the nature of which things are.
We would prefer to just lock down and stay out of it.

Riiiight. Also, you lots job is to serve the American People and protect the Constitution.

 

[Zachowon]

Riiiight. Also, you lots job is to serve the American People and protect the Constitution.

And you want us to coup the US government?
What do you expect us to do domestically exactly?
And it is to serve the people. That is why we are led by civilians...
And we swear and oath to the constitution..

 

[Terthna]

Except given what we saw during Covid and the George Floyd riots, the continuing tyranny through the West by police on behalf of their paymasters, it’s not going to be nearly that one sided. At least not with the police and I doubt the military will be any easier.

Even setting those aside, it's not really all of the people against a few hundred politicians and elites. The nature of bureaucracies is to expand endlessly, so they actually number somewhere in the tens of thousands at least; while a sizeable portion of the people still aspire to join their ranks, and therefor are not inclined to oppose them.

 

[Cherico]

Even setting those aside, it's not really all of the people against a few hundred politicians and elites. The nature of bureaucracies is to expand endlessly, so they actually number somewhere in the tens of thousands at least; while a sizeable portion of the people still aspire to join their ranks, and therefor are not inclined to oppose them.

I think the foundational problem of western civilization right now is that its buracracy has gotten so large that the real economy can no longer support it. Seriously by historical standards the buracracy is way too large.

 

[DarthOne]

I think the foundational problem of western civilization right now is that its buracracy has gotten so large that the real economy can no longer support it. Seriously by historical standards the buracracy is way too large.

Time to take a hatchet to it. Possibly literally in some cases.

 

[Husky_Khan]

"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."

--Eugene McCarthy (The other McCarthy)

 

[stephen the barbarian]

"everybody's talking about AI artificial intelligence and how scary it is I'm convinced that AI has been around forever and the first AI ever invented was bureaucracy.
the minute you get more than like 10 in a group and you give them one goal and tell them that's their only job and that none of them are individually responsible for their actions everything's going to go completely off the rails."- the fat electrician

 

[SoliFortissimi]

That quote about elites is ridiculous. The reason those elites can command the soldiers to kill is because those soldiers either agree with them, or want to share in their wages of sin. The reason mobs will form when politicians demand it is because those mobsters already wanted to create trouble, and were finally given a cause to do so.

And let's not kid ourselves, Stalin didn't do what he did in spite of the people, he did it because of them. Because Russians cheered at the chance to torment their fellows, even at risk of being tormented themselves. They, like all supposedly oppressed subjects of brutal despots, are the architects of their own misery.

Spare them some of your pity, but don't misjudge them for a moment.

 

[Simonbob]

That quote about elites is ridiculous. The reason those elites can command the soldiers to kill is because those soldiers either agree with them, or want to share in their wages of sin. The reason mobs will form when politicians demand it is because those mobsters already wanted to create trouble, and were finally given a cause to do so.

And let's not kid ourselves, Stalin didn't do what he did in spite of the people, he did it because of them. Because Russians cheered at the chance to torment their fellows, even at risk of being tormented themselves. They, like all supposedly oppressed subjects of brutal despots, are the architects of their own misery.

Spare them some of your pity, but don't misjudge them for a moment.

I don't agree.

There are certainly some who want to break that which, in civilised times should not be broken, but they're small in number.

The real problem, as far as I'm concerned, is those who show that they might not like such things, but they'll do as they're told. A lot of our problems can be summed up as "I was told to do that, so, even though it's stupid and wrong, I'll do it."

I honestly think it's more proof of the genetic legacy of slavery. Up until the Brits showed the way, and even after in some places, at least 1/3 of all people were slaves. Those that did not submit were killed, and I think our genetics show that.

 

[SoliFortissimi]

It's more a matter of sociology than genetics, methinks. People who rebel or think independently get killed all the time, so people learn to be stupid and submissive. A sort of fatalism pervades the atmosphere, where people lose faith in the idea that they have any control over their destiny. Or any understanding of objective reality.

 

[Simonbob]

It's more a matter of sociology than genetics, methinks. People who rebel or think independently get killed all the time, so people learn to be stupid and submissive. A sort of fatalism pervades the atmosphere, where people lose faith in the idea that they have any control over their destiny. Or any understanding of objective reality.

If you don't want to beleve that genetics affect our minds, that's not something I can change.

Still wrong, though.

 

[SoliFortissimi]

f you don't want to beleve that genetics affect our minds, that's not something I can change.

Now, now, no strawman arguments.