Ideas rule the world — the ideas of the people who rule the world.
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?
Last to the meeting is most powerful, and apotheosis consists in not showing up at all.
Religion attenuates as crime is punished.
Popular government demands that the people play all roles at once: oppressor and oppressed, ruler and ruled, disenfranchised by vote, silenced by cacophony.
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.