Written history is mostly war, and the surest way to be remembered is to start one.
Ruling
In ’37 Stalin made a hash
Of party loyalists and army brass.
Decimation: One in ten are shot.
What’s the word when one in ten are not?
Democracy dies at scale.
State terror denotes resistance: eventually it can be dispensed with.
The rulers, the ruled, and the theoreticians of rule alike always interest themselves more in who shall rule than how.
Orthodoxy’s palace guard paints and probably sees itself as an embattled and powerless minority, defending unpopular truths without fear or favor.
There are always things you can’t say. Repression is measured by how many obviously true things you can’t say.
Fascism is often confused with a shave, haircut, and shoeshine.
“Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” would be a fine description of communism except that it is atheistic, and thus the dead go unsorted.
High civilizations are lost not in battle but by forfeit.
Modern democracy has nearly perfected itself; that the people can still occasionally make their wishes known remains its one flaw.