Sergey

“Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

“The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

“Looking back now, what I experienced in the wake of the Goldman piece was a lesson in the subtle truth about class politics in this country. Which is this: you can pick on the rich in an ironic, Arrested Development sort of way, you can muss Donald Trump's hair, you can even talk abstractly about class economics using clinical terms like "income disparity." But in our media you're not allowed to just kick the rich in the balls and use class-warfare language. The taboo isn't so much the subject matter, the taboo is the tone.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“So no one was surprised that they didn't make admissions; that would have been tantamount to surrendering in the lawsuit. But it was the tone that startled most people. If your wife catches you with another woman, every man knows, even if you're not sorry, you have to act sorry. You can't just stare back at her and say, "I don't get what you're so upset about."

And that's exactly how the Goldman executives behaved. It wasn't so much that they lied, it was that they seemed to think they were telling the truth. They seemed to really believe they were right.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America