George Orwell, 1984
"Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice."
Edward W. Said, Orientalism , 1978
"When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then— he needn't hope to find himself again."
Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons, 1960
“What I have been trying to say to intellectuals, preachers, scientists - as well as more generally to the public, can be put into one sentence: drop the liberal rhetoric and the conservative default; they are now parts of one and the same official line [prevailing narrative]; transcend that line.
We must come to understand that the exercise of responsibility is diminishing and in fact becoming organized as irresponsibility. We must hold men of power variously responsible for pivotal events, we must unmask their pretentions - and often their own mistaken convictions - that they are not responsible. Our politics, in short, must be the politics of responsibility.”
C. Wright Mills, The Politics of Responsibility, 1960
"Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in an afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism, New York Review, November 1998
Today was a stock option expiration.
I'm getting a lot done on my 'vacation.'
What the Western elite have become rings hollow, with a breath of hellfire from the bowels of the abyss.
"The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect — this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth ― a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”
Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow
Our exceptional moderns do not fall to the irresistible persuasion and promises of Antichrist.
They throw themselves like wantons at its feet, fawning and flattering for favors before the very incarnation of evil.
As old as Babylon, and evil as sin.
Pray to see the evil as it is, so that you may save yourselves and your own.
For many are sliding blindly into the abyss.
Have a pleasant weekend.
