Commonplacing
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.
– Simone Weil, “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,” (1940)*
* Quoted in Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (Anchor Books, 2002), 21.
The one who deals the blow forgets.
The one who carries the scar remembers.
– Haitian proverb*
* Quoted in Jonathan M. Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism (St: Martin’s, 2022), front matter.
Propaganda is also a system of attention management that works through repetition.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, chap. 5.
At its core, propaganda is a set of communication strategies designed to sow confusion and uncertainty, discourage critical thinking, and persuade people that reality is what the leader says it is.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, chap. 5.
Hitler had been in his early twenties when he made an important discovery. He felt most alive when losing himself in something he found sublime, like a Richard Wagner opera or the sound of his own voice.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020), chap. 1.
We sometimes describe aggressors as “brainwashed” by propaganda that dehumanizes their victims, so much so they are “hypnotized” into committing atrocities. But what if the “dehumanising” propaganda rather legitimizes cruelty, makes it ordinary, and the aggressor sees the victims' humanity all too clearly?
– Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (PublicAffairs 2024), chap. 4.
Did the [Ukrainians'] Russian relatives really “believe” [that the Bucha atrocity was fake]? That’s the wrong question. We are not talking about a situation where people weigh evidence and come to a conclusion but rather one where people no longer seem interested in discovering the truth or even consider the truth as having considerable worth.… Polls in Russia concluded that Putin’s supporters thought that “the government is right, solely because it is the government and it has power.” Truth was not a value in itself; it was a subset of power.
– Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (PublicAffairs 2024), chap. 4.
We often wonder why people follow leaders who are wildly self-centered, greedy, and hateful. But that can be the very essence of their power: they allow their followers to indulge in their most cruel and hateful impulses, even as they foster the illusion that they are part of a noble and courageous spiritual mission.
– Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (PublicAffairs 2024), chap. 2.
🙃 Unprecedented times?
It’s like being killed by a bear. Lots of people have been killed by a bear, and so that’s not at all unprecedented. But in this case, the bear is wearing a thong and he beats you to death with a dead, wet owl. The problem and outcome are the same – bear attack, death – but somehow, it all feels so, so much stupider.
– Chuck Wendig, “How to Write Words and Make Art in This Dire Era of Clowns and Cowards,” terribleminds.com.
The opening paragraph of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a doozy:
Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder. I am exactly halfway up. The floor of the bookstore is far below me, the surface of a planet I’ve left behind. The tops of the shelves loom high above, and it’s dark up there—the books are packed in close, and they don’t let any light through. The air might be thinner, too. I think I see a bat.
Considering the $16.1 billion in contracts the federal government has handed to SpaceX since 2003, the interests of SpaceX and the agencies counting on the company to fulfill the nation’s space policy goals are increasingly aligned. “We call it agency capture,” says [Jared] Margolis. “Agencies are not there to protect the public; they’re there to promote the businesses that they regulate, in a lot of ways.”
– “Elon Musk’s Texas Takeover” by Abby Vesoulis, Mother Jones, January/February 2024 issue, American Oligarchy.
Good and healthy societies do not require to be ruled by terror. This is not to deny that terror is an enormously effective means of creating a menacing machine. The shrewd exploitations of fear is an ancient means of ruling. But it is also a dangerous way of ruling. For one thing, it cuts the rulers themselves off from reality. In a society where no one can complain, no one knows the depths of resentment ready to flare up once the opportunity comes.
– Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak (Houghton Mifflin Co. 1939), 11.
…The only thing more vexing than being a Trump critic is being a Trump ally.
House Speaker Mike Johnson announces that male Republicans neutered by Donald Trump may continue to use the men’s bathrooms.
🏳️⚧️ From the Church of Sweden via @transworld.bsky.social:
God, today on Transgender Day of Remembrance, I want to remember everyone who doesn’t get to be called by their right name, everyone who is hated so much that it leaves an imprint on their soul, everyone who needs a place where they can breathe, and where they can be themselves. Amen.
I don’t think there’s a trend towards actual conservatism in the Valley—there’s a trend towards monopoly and corruption, and that’s led a bunch of VCs directly to Trump. Peter Thiel wrote “Competition is for Losers” in The WSJ a decade ago! Here you go, America.
– Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, in an interview with Oliver Darcy for Status, November 17, 2024
At least, when you knock a fascist out, you will send him to a hospital or observation ward—but when he knocks you out, he sends you to a concentration camp or a crematorium.
– Frances Fineman Gunther (ca. May 1934 in Vienna), quoted by Deborah Cohen, Last Call at the Hotel Imperial, chap. 8