The speech-censors make their presence known; the thought-censors censor first the thought that they exist.
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?
Those who believe that society can be reengineered rarely have much engineering experience.
Voting, like tattoos, diverts the urge toward self-expression from more noisome forms like speech.
There are two kinds of governments: those, like absolute monarchies, that tell their subjects frankly who rules them; and those, like democracies, that lie about it.
In honest places the corrupt official does not know his own worth, and comes cheap.
If voting posed any threat to the reigning order, one would not be constantly exhorted to do it.
With elites like these, who needs commoners?
The Four Freedoms
abortion
border-jumping
sodomy
dope
Deviants and criminals, given the chance, will dwell endlessly on their own deviance and criminality. Repression at least obliges them to change the subject.
To tyrannize over a people it is necessary to humiliate them, and nothing is more humiliating than declaring normal acts heinous crimes.