Why is the sight of a moon sliver and a bright star next to it so beautiful? I want it to mean something. So much coming at us, and I feel diminished even as I wax, as powerful and dumb as the moon.
Your silhouette crossing the lawn and away from me.
The urge to wrest from the gut when the words form in the brain.
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
The quote is scary as shit.
ReplyDeleteThe moon and Venus are ethereal. I watched them a month ago on Cozumel and I am watching them again now in Lloyd. I saw them in Jacksonville on Monday night and their beauty comforted me.
People have been looking at the Moon and Venus for as long as we have populated planet earth. They wondered, just as you do now. These celestial bodies are unchanging, and regard us not. They exist because they exist, and that is truth, hanging in the sky for us to see.
ReplyDeleteI've been looking at quotes of Hitler's. They seem to match Trump quite well sadly.
ReplyDeleteMy god, that is a scary quotation.
ReplyDelete