Popular government demands that the people play all roles at once: oppressor and oppressed, ruler and ruled, disenfranchised by vote, silenced by cacophony.
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?
Stupidity at an immense age becomes instrumental rationality, just as crime on an immense scale becomes statecraft.
The best one can ever say for a policy is that it has not been obviously ruinous.
Unduly harsh sentences indicate not law and order, but its opposite: that almost no one gets caught.
Hate speech, n. Speech you hate.
The bore is the tyrant of private life.
There can be no tyranny without opacity.
Every party looks its best out of power.
Love has done nothing to stop wars, but marriage has prevented quite a few.
In politics you can be right as long as you don’t care if you win, or win as long as you don’t care if you’re right.