“Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could... See more

This is an obnoxious answer of sorts, but it’d be like: The political establishment, the leaders we have, will actually solve some of these problems, and this is the last time we’re going to have this conversation. And if you ask to talk to me a bunch of times over the next 10 years, that won’t be healthy, because it will be because these problems... See more

In Leviathan , Thomas Hobbes names four “abuses” of speech, the second of which is “when [men] use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for; and thereby deceive others.”

On first encounter I found Hobbes’s whole argument sort of obviously silly. The problem is, unfortunately, I also think he might be kind of... See more

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind—it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the

... See more