The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil

by Michael Malice

In regards to the “obviously phoney trials,” Sinclair claimed to have taken a balanced view: Over and over again I ask myself: Is it conceivable that revolutionists, trained in a lifetime of war against the Czar, would go into open court and confess to actions which they had not committed? I ask: Is there any torture, any kind of terror, physical, mental, or moral, which would induce them to such a thing?[cclxxxv] Rhetorical questions are perhaps of use rhetorically, but they do not affect reality in the slightest. If an individual cannot conceive of an answer to a question, that does not mean or even imply that the answer is inconceivable. It could simply mean that his knowledge or imagination is limited. The man who wrote of greedy capitalists selling sausages made of human meat found it impossible that men, even men trained in a lifetime of war, could be tortured to such a degree that they would make false confessions—even if they were confessing to things which were demonstrably false and literally impossible.