#politics

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war's appeal. ↗

— Chris Hedges

#meaning #politics #purpose-of-life #war #life

I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#divine-law #human-laws #law #life #natural-order

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. ↗

— Jonah Goldberg

#government #jonah-goldberg #liberal #politics #love

But liberals love to drape themselves in decades-old glories they had nothing to do with. ↗

— Ann Coulter

#politics #love

Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge. ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#politics #revenge #men

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. ↗

— Plato

#men

As heirs to a legacy more than two centuries old, it is understandable why present-day Americans would take their own democracy for granted. A president freely chosen from a wide-open field of two men every four years; a Congress with a 99% incumbency rate; a Supreme Court comprised of nine politically appointed judges whose only oversight is the icy scythe of Death -- all these reveal a system fully capable of maintaining itself. But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them. ↗

— Jon Stewart

#democracy #humor #politics #supreme-court #voting

Facing a deteriorating economy and a weakening hold over the populace, the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein opted to revitalize tribal leaders and conservative practices as a means of stabilizing state power; those conservative practices were not an inherent feature of a predominantly Muslim country. ↗

— Nadje Al-Ali

#foreign-policy #government #iraq #iraqi-state #islam

When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: "Don't think, don't politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think! ↗

— Slavoj Žižek

#money #philosophy #politics #money

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. ↗

— Warren Buffett

#class-warfare #economics #economics-greed #economics-money #inequality