Think for yourself

There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity. - Paul Bourget

Once the people begin to reason, all is lost. - Voltaire

Thought without practice is empty...action without thought is blind. - Kwame Nkrumah

No one should be the gatekeepers of our history. Least of all those who laud their certitude in the face of the unknowable. - JR Leach

The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is. - Rosa Luxemburg

,,,entranced by their need to know WHAT to think, their inability to know HOW to think left them vulnerable to domination by demagogues and the dissolution of a free society and so, born citizens, they died subjects. - el gato malo

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes. - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

...science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. It's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights, the people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education; otherwise we don't run the government, the government runs us. - Carl Sagan

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have. - Theodore H. White

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. - Thomas Pynchon

It is better to be divided by the truth than to be united by error. - Jay (blog post commenter)

Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation. - Leo Szilard

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves; wiser people are full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

To those who see the world in black and white, gray is heresy and color is madness. - Will Shetterly

Those who obtained the documents may, for all I know be dedicated otter baiters or believe in stealing ice cream from children. I am referencing the evidence they have obtained in this particular case, not endorsing - or condemning - anything else in their lives or work. I really have had enough of illogical detraction by association as a way of avoiding logical argument by an absurd extension of ad hominen argument to third parties. - Craig Murray

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.― Christopher Hitchens

Men…think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. – Charles Mackay

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. ― Christopher Hitchens

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. - Naguib Mahfouz

Your favorite commentator will eventually say something you strongly disagree with. The more you put them on a pedestal, the more that's going to hurt. Regard them as an equal, whose views you can take when they're useful and leave when they're not, and this won't happen. - Caitlin Johnstone

The wisest men follow their own direction and listen to no prophet guiding them. None but the fools believe in oracles, forsaking their own judgment. - Euripedes

If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking - George S. Patton

You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Ignore what they say, watch what they do. - Meteor Blades

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true. - Richard Feynman

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves. - Eric Hoffer

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. - Albert Einstein

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly. - Ogden Nash

What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do. - Arthur Schopenhauer

I have come to the conclusion a large majority like being lied to… they like the comfort of the consistency of narrative. If everyone is telling the same lies, it must be true and the actual truth is too disturbing. It’s a simplistic state requiring no troublesome thinking... Complexity makes their brains hurt. - John Bowman (commenter on badcattitude post)

Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty; eternal vigilance is the price of human decency. - Aldous Huxley

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. - Buddha

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in. - A.E. Housman

I would rather have questions that can't be answered, than answers that can't be questioned. - Richard Feynman

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle

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The general conclusions reached here over the past nine months (for example) have consistently outperformed the media, the Academy and the political castes which amount to an incredibly expensive and complex and enormously staffed engine designed - in theory at least - to arrive at a realistic assessment of the situation.

As for us here at MoA, where you are about ten times more likely to discover what's going on in the world than in any medium of the dominant class - than the New Yorker, The Guardian, BBC or even the favoured forums of the intelligentsia such as the Reviews of Books, The Economist or Foreign affairs - here, as in a democracy, anyone can contribute. And just about anything which is not totally irrelevant or offensively obscene, is allowed. Every kind of eccentricity is permitted.

And there are no qualifications demanded of contributors. There is no literacy requirement, no Academic Degrees or resumes of experience, closeness to power or personal beauty are judged. All that matters is how close the poster comes to the truth, which, in the end, and usually sooner rather than later, is invariably revealed.

That is the way that democracy works - everyone gets to express opinions and they are judged by the minds they change. Or fail to change. - user bevin, frequent commenter at Moon for Alabama (h/t u/Sandernista2):

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Dangers of misplaced trust

We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)

When people show you who they are, believe them the first time. - Maya Angelou

before granting any power to government, first imagine that power wielded by the politician you hate most, because one day, it will be. - coyote's law from badcattitude

We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.” ― Chris Hedges

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. - Thomas Sowell

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. - Umberto Eco

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. - Thurgood Marshall

these people have the memory of a goldfish and the morality of a piranha. - el gato malo

The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad. - James Madison

When we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones? - Samuel Croxall

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. - Hannah Arendt

In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. - Michael Crichton.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison

Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. - James Baldwin

The worst patriots are those who hold certainty dearer than truth, who, in order to spare themselves the pain of thought, are willing to inflict untold sufferings on others. - William Sloane Coffin

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. - Voltaire

If you've got 'em by the ballskies, their heartskies and mindskies will follow. - Chuck Kolsinski (h/t u/Caelian, play on quote by Chuck Colson)

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes. —Thomas Paine

In many ways, cults show us the demand side of fascism — a huge percentage of the population really wants someone to rule over them. - Dr. Toby Rogers

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. - Stanley Milgram

That which hits the fan is not often evenly distributed. - u/welshTerrier2

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Censorship

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it. - George Orwell

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. - George R.R. Martin

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. - Benjamin Franklin

those who cannot compete in a marketplace of ideas will always seek to shut the marketplace down. - el gato malo

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. - Lord Acton

Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Pravin Lal

Well, I'll tell ya, in all my years I ain't never heard, seen nor smelt an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about. Hell yeah! I'm for debating anything. Rhode Island says yea! - Stephen Hopkins in 1776

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. - Henry Steele Commager

Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? - Lillian Hellman

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.- Emile Zola

You don't have to be a supporter of freedom of speech to protest when your own ox is being gored. You do have to be a supporter of freedom of speech to protest when the government tries to censor the speech of those who are goring your ox. - Alan M. Dershowitz

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with. - Eleanor Holmes Norton

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. - JFK

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. - John Adams

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. - Dandamis

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; The right to hold unpopular beliefs; The right to protest; The right of independent thought. - Margaret Chase Smith

you do not strive to silence those whose opinions lack merit and foundation. you silence those you cannot refute... the best way to discredit those who are wrong is to hand them a megaphone and listen carefully to what they have to say. - el gato malo

The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself. - Augustine of Hippo

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. - Thomas Paine

nothing tells you you’re onto something important like important people trying to silence you. it’s such a perfect strategy to teach the masses who is for real and who is only about phony, self-aggrandizing woo-woo. - el gato malo

[T]he best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)

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Money and power

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor. - Voltaire

It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. - FDR

It's said that "power corrupts," but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable. - David Brin

The louder he talks of honour, the faster we count our spoons. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies - Thomas Jefferson

Only the grand scale and technocratic impersonality of the crimes conceived and directed by the ruling elite acting under cover of state authority distinguish them from garden variety killers. - Darrell Hamamoto

The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. - Rosa Luxemburg

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the Banks. - L.D. Byrne

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. - Plato

Mediocrities, entrusted with power over their fellow-creatures, invariably develop into tyrants. All history proves it. - Frederick Baron Corvo

The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity. - Naomi Klein

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws! - Mayer Amschel Rothschild

If the people knew how the banking system worked, they'd burn it down by morning. - Henry Ford

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. - Dorothy Parker

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Propaganda

“boy did i call it or what?” - george orwell (via el gato malo)

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. - Bertrand Russell

...most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all. - Michael Rivera

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations. - Aldous Huxley

The success of “disinformation warfare” often stems from an initial, massively coordinated presentation to world media of a simple but false story, which no amount of scientific and rational argument can later dislodge. Such a story is framed to appeal to emotional triggers that enrage and incense people before they have the chance to see if the story is true… - David MacIlwain

media loves authoritarianism because it elevates them to policy level status as propaganda ministries. they fall all over themselves to join. - el gato malo

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. - Aldous Huxley

The forest kept shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe. For the axe was clever and convinced them that since his handle was wood, he was one of them. - West Asian Fable

in all seriousness you guys, if they wagged this dog any harder, i’m pretty sure its butt would fall off… - el gato malo

What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise. - Barbara Jordan

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie, - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

there is always room for reasonable people to disagree on complex issues, but nobody trusts a liar. - el gato malo

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Dissent

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. - Tzvetan Todorov

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds. - Samuel Adams

Today anyone who wants to fight lies and ignorance and to write the truth has to overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth, even though it is suppressed everywhere; the cleverness to recognise it, even though it is disguised everywhere; the skill to make it fit for use as a weapon; the judgement to select those in whose hands it will become effective; the cunning to spread it amongst them. These difficulties are great for those who write under Fascism, but they also exist for those who were driven out or have fled, indeed, even for those who write in the lands of bourgeois freedom. - Bertold Brecht

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority - Benjamin Franklin

Conformity is doing what everybody else is doing, regardless of what is right. Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what everybody else is doing. - Euette Carter

that which cannot be challenged cannot be trusted. - el gato malo

The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason. - Mary Wollstonecraft

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. - Thomas Jefferson

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted,the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. - Haile Selassie

Write on my gravestone: "Infidel, Traitor" -- infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people. - Wendell Phillips

Progress is not achieved by preachers and guardians of morality but to paraphrase Yevgeny Zamyatin, "by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics". - Stephen Fry

If M. de Becourt’s book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we chuse. - Thomas Jefferson

We have come to a point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason to submit. - Carl Schurz

We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that buried its head in the sand waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education, or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and timeless absence of moral leadership. We must dissent, because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better. - Thurgood Marshall

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. - MLK Jr.

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. - Charles Peguy

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. - Hartley Shawcross

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. - J. William Fulbright

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government. - Edward Abbey

All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." - H.L. Mencken

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. - Henri Frederic Amiel

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. - Susan B. Anthony

The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion. - Molly Ivins

Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past. - Maurice Maeterlinck

Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America’s official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them. - Mark Hertzgaard

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - Thomas Paine

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. - Margaret Chase Smith

He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. - John Stuart Mill

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. -Barbara Ehrenreich

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. - Samuel Adams

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world. - John Steinbeck

Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on the top. - Edward Abbey

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance. - Vaclav Havel

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty - Thomas Jefferson

If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin - Samuel Adams

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. - Frederick Douglass

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right. - MLK Jr.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - MLK Jr.

What has become of our government that they act so indecently? What has become of the rest of us that so few raise their voices in protest and to demand better? - Patrick Lawrence, on the US response to the devastating earthquake in Syria, Feb. 6, 2023

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. - Edward R. Murrow

If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. - Capt. Ian Fishback

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. - James Russell Lowell

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. - H.L. Mencken

If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag; wash it. - Norman Thomas

Not everyone understands the fine points of democracy, but everyone, everywhere, understands hypocrisy. - Jack Clooney

The peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.' - Carl Schurz

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose. - John Kenneth Galbraith

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Us vs. Them

you may not go in with the intention to commit an atrocity, but you’ve certainly set the stage for one by creating societal nitroglycerine. claiming you didn’t do it when it blows up is like leaving a pack of hyenas to watch a kindergarten class and acting surprised when there are fewer kids when you get back. - el gato malo

But this is the great danger America faces - that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual; each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good? - Barbara Jordan

Try this for yourself. Take any accusatory article from BBC or CNN, replace “Russian” with “white people” or “Republicans” or “Trump supporters” and it’ll not change at all. The collective hate boner against Russia is just more white people ingroup hostility, and it’s not even imaginative. - Ian Kummer

people are incredibly tired of this game of “punch no punchbacks” played by a tactically touchy, explicitly dishonest, explosively aggrieved gang of wokester crybullies who demand the right to push you around, dictate life and stricture to you, and disappear in a cloud of accusation based squid ink whenever challenged. - el gato malo

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit attrocities - Voltaire

in an age of moral relativism, objective virtue is rendered impossible and subjective virtue derives from a consensus that is an inherently inconstant function of tribalism. - el gato malo

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. - Theodore Roosevelt

the wokesters of lunatic loserdom are not a large group. they only appear that way. this deception is achieved by media control, selective amplification, selective suppression, and top down dialogue shaping about what is allowed to trend and who gets shadowbanned, down moderated, and outright ousted...of all the logical fallacies, appeal to not only authority, but one’s own authority is perhaps the purest expression of coddled vanity. - el gato malo

Not being a left-wing racist or police state fan doesn’t make you a white supremacist or a Trump worshipper, either. Only small children, machines, and religious fanatics think in binaries... join us in laughing at all the idiotic name-calling that is applied, with increasing hysteria, to try and stop more and more normal Americans from joining our ranks. Fascists? Conspiracy theorists? Anti-science racist TERFs? Whatever. We have a better word to describe ourselves: free. - Liel Leibovitz

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Work in progress

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