#political

The real enemy" is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists. ↗

— Bob Black

#neo-situationism #philosophy #political-philosophy #political-science #post-left-anarchy

Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#democracy

If there is to be no ceiling on the amount of money a man can take out of our economy, then concomitantly there can be no foundation below which a human being cannot sink. What capitalists must realize is that you are fighting to make capitalism survive, not destroy it; you are fighting to eliminate the seeds of destruction inherent in the status quo." ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's letter to Don Matchan, 27 April 1947 ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#letters #political-observation #money

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#rules

In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky," writes Saul. "I answered two of them incorrectly. ↗

— Nicholas von Hoffman

#community #funny #organization #political #radical

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#political-philosophy #nature

Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County. ↗

— John Grisham

#thriller #thriller

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood] ↗

— Victor Hugo

#les-misérables #political #poverty #society #victor-hugo

Just as no sane farmer would express disappointment because his cow did not lay eggs or hope that his cow might be induced to lay eggs, an intelligent observer should be expected to refrain from critical or hortatory discussion of the functional capacity of the United Nations that is uninformed by an accurate understanding of the realistic possibilities. We have no warrant for being hopeful, disillusioned, cynical, or fearful of the United Nations, unless the expectations that enter into our judgment bear some sensible relationship to the nature of the organization and the limitations set by the political context within which it operates. ↗

— Inis L. Claude

#political-science #united-nations #intelligence

وضمن هذا السعي إلي الإمساك بالدولة, فإن دعاة الإسلام السياسي لا يختلفون- من جهتهم- عن غيرهم من الذين عملوا, من جهة أخري, تحت رايات الأيديولوجيات التحديثية( الليبرالية والقومية والاشتراكية وغيرها). وأعني من حيث إنهم جميعا يراوحون تحت مظلة ذات الأطروحة التي لا تري للتغيير سبيلا إلا بتسكين الجوانب التقنية الإجرائية من الحداثة فوق ذات البنيات التقليدية المتوارثة للوعي التي تحتفظ للجمهور بوداعته وهدوئه وطاعته. وفقط فإن الاختلاف بينهما يأتي من نوع المفردات التي يستخدمها كل فريق في سعيه إلي الهيمنة علي المجال العام. إذ فيما ظل دعاة الأيديولوجيات الحداثوية يستخدمون المفردات المتداولة في إطار الأيديولوجيات التي يبشرون بها( من قبيل الحرية والديمقراطية والدستور والاشتراكية والطبقة العاملة والقومية وغيرها); والتي لم يقدروا علي السيطرة بها علي المجال العام لعدم امتلاك الجمهور- المقصود التأثير عليه بها- للتراث المعرفي والتاريخي الذي تقف عليه هذه المفردات, فإن دعاة الإسلام السياسي يستخدمون مفردات تنتمي للرأسمال الرمزي الديني للجمهور للسيطرة علي المجال العام( من قبيل الشريعة والحكم بما أنزل الله وتطبيق الحدود وغيرها); وبما سيجعل من دولة الإسلام السياسي, الدولة التنين فعلا ↗

— علي مبروك

#political #politics #religion #religion