Jacques

“Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of
us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the
spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his
cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural
experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too
accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear
that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless
chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the
individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed
place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from
history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another,
or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and
cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We
sing in the woods at night because we are afraid.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Teaching the police to be more sensitive to the most exploited and oppressed is only a strategy designed to prevent police heavy-handedness from unintentionally sparking rebellions as they trample people in the performance of their duties.”
― Peter Gelderloos, The Failure of Nonviolence: From the Arab Spring to Occupy

“We are still in the Age of Rationalism, which began in the eighteenth century and is now rapidly nearing its close. We are all its creatures whether we know and wish it or not. The word is familiar enough, but who knows how much it implies? It is the arrogance of the urban intellect, which, detached from its roots and no longer guided by strong instinct, looks down with contempt on the full-blooded thinking of the past and the wisdom of ancient peasant stock. It is the period in which everyone can read and write and therefore must have his say and always "knows better." This type of mind is obsessed by concepts - the new gods of the Age - and it exercises its wits on the world as it sees it. "It is no good," it says; "we could make it better; here goes, let us set up a program for a better world!" Nothing could be easier for persons of intelligence, and no doubt seems to be felt that this world will then materialize of itself. It is given a label, "Human Progress," and now that it has a name, it is. Those who doubt it are narrow reactionaries, heretics, and, what is worse, persons devoid of democratic virtue: away with them! In this wise the fear of reality was overcome by intellectual arrogance, the darkness that comes from ignorance of all things of life, spiritual poverty, lack of reverence, and, finally, world-alien stupidity - for there is nothing stupider than the rootless urban intelligence.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Bannon’s vision is shared by Russian far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, who is popular in both Trump’s and Putin’s circles.3 “It is generally important,” Dugin wrote in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics, “to introduce geopolitical chaos within the American daily experience by encouraging all manner of separatism, ethnic diversity, social and racial conflict, actively supporting every extremist dissident movement, racist sectarian groups, and destabilizing the political processes within America.”4”
― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent