“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
— Major General Smedely Butler, two time winner of the Medal of Honor, “War Is A Racket”.
*****
“Maybe it’s overly optimistic of me to think this matters, but when it comes to beating Trump, it would be nice to have a candidate who can speak clearly in public. Is that really too much to ask?”
— Amanda Marcotte, Trump and Biden both sound increasingly incoherent.
*****
“It’s not enough to believe in something. you have to be ready to stand for something if you want it to change. …Are you ready for this to change? “
— Edward Snowden, Snowden.
*****
“It will be difficult to depose Trump with someone who doesn’t acknowledge the very legitimate concerns of voters about income inequality and political disenfranchisement, and who proposes fundamental changes—one might even say revolutionary change. In short, someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.”
— John Atcheson, Neoliberal Democrats Need to Stop Blaming the Internet and Take Some Responsibility for 2016.
*****
“The rupture of social bonds, caused by the breakdown of society, income inequality, social stagnation and the disempowerment of the working class, is expressed in innumerable dark pathologies. A fractured public carries out self-destructive behaviors—out-of-control gun violence, opioid addiction and sexual sadism—in an attempt to cope with dislocation, impotence and pain. Moral crusades are an expression of this cultural sickness. They are emblematic of a society in deep distress, unable to cope rationally with the problems besetting it. These crusades always make things worse, for once they are exposed as ineffectual they invariably breed a frightening fanaticism.”
— Chris Hedges, The Curse of Moral Purity
*****
“Fascism is cured by reading, racism is cured by traveling.”
— Miguel de Unamuno
*****
“Doesn’t idiocy ever take a vacation?”
— John Feffer, Burning Down the House.
*****
“Everything you know is wrong.”
— Fireside Theater