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I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas.
inadequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.
There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.
As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He’s had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.
It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for.
Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.
God is Change, And in the end, God prevails. But meanwhile… Kindness eases Change. Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful Positive obsession Blunts pain, Diverts rage, And engages each of us In the greatest, The most intense Of our chosen struggles
All things change, but all things need not change in all ways.
I’ve heard that in some of the more religious towns, repression of women has become more and more extreme. A woman who expresses her opinions, “nags,” disobeys her husband, or otherwise “tramples her womanhood” and “acts like a man,” might have her head shaved, her forehead branded, her tongue cut out, or, worst case, she might be stoned to death or burned.
Others, whether we thought of them as friends or not, would be all too willing to join the mob and to stomp us and rob us if stomping and robbing became a test of courage or a test of loyalty to country, religion, or race.
Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.”
We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to took down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.
he still knows how to rouse his rabble, how to reach out to poor people, and sic them on other poor people. How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?
It shouldn’t be so easy to nudge people toward what might be their own destruction.
They don’t believe Jarret’s a fascist. They don’t believe that the church burnings, witch burnings, and other abuses are Jarret’s doing.
“We’ll do what we have to do, no matter who’s warming the chair in the Oval Office.
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself
and those you love into slavery.
“Camp Christian Reeducation Facility.” The Crusaders have surrounded the place with a Lazor-wire fence, so there’s no safe entry or exit except at the gate.
How many people, I wonder, can be penned up and tormented—reeducated—before it begins to matter to the majority of Americans? How does this penning people up look to other countries? Do they know? Would they care?
They say they’re religious, but power has corrupted even the best of them.
Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn’t get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.
In less than a year, Jarret went from being our savior, almost the Second Coming in some people’s minds, to being an incompetent son of a bitch who was wasting our substance on things that didn’t matter.
Christian America was, at first, much more a refuge for the ignorant and the intolerant than it should have been.
And the thugs see him as one of them. They envy him. He is the bigger, the more successful thief, murderer, and slaver. The working poor who love Jarret want to be fooled, need to be fooled. They scratch a living, working long, hard hours at dangerous, dirty jobs, and they need a savior.
To hear and to see Even an obvious lie Again And again and again May be to say it, Almost by reflex Then to defend it
Because we’ve said it And at last to embrace it Because we’ve defended it And because we cannot admit That we’ve embraced and defended An obvious lie. Thus, without thought, Without intent, We make Mere echoes Of ourselves—
“Who was the Paracetco addict in your family?” “They both were—both of my parents.” “Oh, my. And you were the evidence of their misbehavior, the constant reminder. I suppose they couldn’t forgive you for that.”
People do blame you for the things they do to you.
“These days, projecting blame is almost an art form.”
We’ve been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We’re all wounded. We’re healing as best we can. And, no, we’re not normal. Normal people wouldn’t have survived what we’ve survived. If we were normal we’d be dead.”
Even the pretense of having an educated populace was ending.
Jarret’s kind of religion and Jarret himself are getting less and less popular these days. Both, it seems, are bad for business, bad for the U.S. Constitution, and bad for a large percentage of the population. They always have been, but now more and more people are willing to say so in public. The Crusaders have terrorized some people into silence, but they’ve just made others very angry.
It will force us to become more than we might ever become without it.
Talents is intended to be not only a continuation of Sower and of Olamina’s life, but of people trying either individually or in groups to find some way out of their trouble.
Hunting for scapegoats is always popular in times of serious trouble. So is hunting for the great leader who will restore prosperity and stability.
He turns his true believers—his thugs—loose on those he chooses as scapegoats and he looks around for an external enemy to use as an even bigger scapegoat and a diversion from the reality that he doesn’t really know what to do.
Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than frightened, confused, desperate people looking for solutions is frightened, confused, desperate people finding and settling for truly bad solutions.
The problem, of course, with throwing people away is that they don’t go away. They stay in the society that turned its back on them. And whether that society likes it or not, they find all sorts of things to do.
