Orts #806
My country came together in one revolution and was nearly broken by another.
The first revolution was a protest against galling, stupid, but relatively mild social and economic exploitation. It was almost uniquely successful.
Many of those who made the first revolution practiced the most extreme form of economic exploitation and social oppression: they were slave owners.
The second American revolution, the Civil War, was an attempt to preserve slavery. It was partially successful. The institution was abolished, but the mind of the master and the mind of the slave still think a good many of the thoughts of America.
— Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- ), in an essay, A War Without End, in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination
To be really ethical, to think about right and wrong, means that we must dispense with the authorities who tell us what is right and wrong.
— Mark Wekander Voigt, in connection with Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle
We must weigh our votes carefully. Else we are in danger of turning America’s time-tested democracy into a kakistocracy.
— Dan Warner, The Best Man for the Job Is Not as Easy as it Sounds, in The News Press (Fort Myers, Florida), January 17, 2016
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essential reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/opinion/the-banal-belligerence-of-donald-trump.html?ref=opinion&_r=0