Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They’re a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package. 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.

Interesting that they fear Edward Jay Smith’s supposed incompetence more than they fear Jarret’s obvious tyranny.

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? Well, now he’s conquered. In January of next year, he’ll be sworn in, and he’ll rule. Then, I suppose we’ll see just how much of his own propaganda he believes.

It shouldn’t be so easy to nudge people toward what might be their own destruction.

My brother on the other hand, used to despise Jarret. Now he says Jarret is just what America needs. And I’m afraid that it’s me he’s begun to despise.

There was a mindless rigidity about some Christian Americans—about the ones who did the most harm. They were so certain that they were right that, like medieval inquisitors, they would kill you, even torture you to death, to save your soul.

Christian America had created whole new categories of sin and expanded old ones.

There are times when I wish I believed in hell—other than the hells we make for one another, I mean.

People do blame you for the things they do to you.

But the Church wasn’t only a religion. It was a community—my community. I didn’t want to be free of it. That would have been—had been—impossibly lonely. Everyone needs to be part of something.