and even if they don’t pay off, it’s better than waiting for death and oil, and shooting wild turkey, and waiting for the world to begin.
“Souls weren’t something one was born with. No, I knew that now. Souls, and the resulting power, they were the sum of one’s pain, one’s joy, one’s laughter, and one’s wanting. All captured and distilled and expelled upon death.”
― Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon
― Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon
“It was from Washington’s bribes, subsidies, and cajolings that institutional schooling spread, not from the merit of the idea.”
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
“What Hegel taught that intrigued the powerful then and now was that history could be deliberately managed by skillfully provoking crises out of public view and then demanding national unity to meet those crises — a disciplined unity under cover of which leadership privileges approached the absolute.”
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
“The dark side of the Welfare State midwifed by Beatrice Webb and the Fabian socialists is not its superficial purpose of being kind, but its intention of killing with kindness, and thus protecting the interests of the better people, non-violently.”
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
“When you flip hamburgers, sit at a computer all day, unpack and shelve merchandise from China year after year, you manage the tedium better if you have a shallow inner life, one you can escape through booze, drugs, sex, media, or other low level addictive behaviors. Easier to keep sane if your inner life is shallow. School, thought Harris the great American schoolman, should prepare ordinary men and women for lifetimes of alienation. Can you say he wasn’t fully rational?”
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
― Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
Rainer’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rainer’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Rainer
Lists liked by Rainer









































