Category: Quotes

He said. She said.

Life Of Nothingness Trumps Your #Trump Unless, Of Course, You’re A Step Atop Caesar’s Goo Salad Dressing

“It is a recurrent joke among writers of farces that wives rejoice in being beaten by their husbands. It reflects, however, an eternal truth–that there is a great comfort in knowing that those who love you love you enough to take the responsibility for marking out the permissible. Husbands often er–but in both directions. Caesar is a tyrant–both as husband and as ruler. It is not that, like other tyrants, he is chary of according liberty to others; it is that, loftily free himself, he has lost all touch with the way freedom operates and is developed in others; always mistaken, he accords to little or he accords too much.”

-LIII. Cytheris to Lucius Mamilium Turrinus, on the Island of Capri, The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder

Rant on.

-T

As The God’s Of Your Mind Play Fiddle Diddle Widdle

Even if we assume the existence of a God who, as Homer says, pours out from his urns his good and evil gifts, I am amazed at the pious who insult their God by failing to see that as this world is run there is a field of circumstance that is not commensurate with God’s providence and that God must have so intended it.

-Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

Another Night Of Not Finding You-Know-Who Or How I Beat It Before Turning Sixty One Last Time

Ok. Obviously there are better things to be done on a Friday night before flying to my beloved homeland Sunday morning. The only question that remains is: what the hell to do Saturday night? In the mean time, here another fabulous quote as I re-read a book.

“When individuals are finally emasculated and alone, bereft of the help of competing collectives, they cannot defend their rights or question the abuses of their overlords. When there is no other place to turn for help other than the world of miracles and magic, mediated by those who grow rich off those who suffer, when reality to an ideology becomes a litmus test for individual worth, tyranny follows.”

-Chris Hedges, American Fascists – The Christian Right And The War On America.

Rant on.

-T

A Quest For Understanding That I Know I’m Losing, Have Lost, Now Just Let Go And Watch The Cliff Pass Before Us

But I used to have great confidence in understanding. Now take a phrase like “father forgive them; they know not what they do.” This may be interpreted as a promise that in time we would be delivered from blindness and understand. On the other hand, it may also mean that with time we will understand our own enormities and crimes, and that sounds to me like a threat.

-Saul Bellow, Henderson The Rain King

I don’t know what came first, dear worst-reader. The title of this worst-post or the quote in it. Nomatter. Move on. And…

Rant on.

-T

The Looking Mirror Avoided

“For example (and thanks to Doug Korty for this point), the total deficits of the federal government from 1950 to 2009 were $6.6 trillion. During those years, three Republican presidents (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush) accounted for the vast majority of those deficits. All the other presidents (Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton) combined accounted for a small fraction only. The three deficit-happy Republican presidents were the most conservative and subservient to major capitalists interests. They all increased spending (chiefly for military and counter-crisis purposes) while cutting taxes (especially for corporations and the richest individuals). Such policies forced huge federal deficits and rapid national debt hikes. The Obama administration ran very large deficits and boosted the national debt through stimulus outlays and costly wars without offsetting tax increases.”

-From the chapter Capitalism, Democracy, and Elections (2013), Richard Wolff’s book: “Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens”

Keep that in mind the next time you vote for someone on account of your taxes, your debts, Her emails, your general nonsense of living as an #americant soothed by pharmaceuticals and/or Disney and/or the lie of the mind that is your hope and desire of exceptional-ism. And now. Go buy something.

Rant on. And. Good luck suckers.

-T