Greg > Recent Status Updates

Die Gerechten müssen viel leiden, erklärte er.

Imagine a fascist dealing with a hungry cat. ‘Why won’t they stop?’ they’d mutter, clutching their classified documents. They’d probably try to distract the cat with meaningless platitudes—‘Can’t you wait a little longer? We’re working on a feeding plan! It’ll be ready in two weeks!’—only to find that cats, much like the rest of us, don’t fall for empty promises.

Aber gute Taten lassen sich nicht stornieren. Die moralische Gleichung verläuft anders als die arithmetische.

Vor einem halben Jahr gab es einen Skandal, der nur schlecht vertuscht wurde; ein älterer Herr fand in dem Zimmer, das er zu Vergnügungszwecken betrat, zwar, wie er erwartet hatte, ein sechzehnjähriges entkleidetes Mädchen vor, aber es war leider seine Tochter, und das hat er nicht erwartet…

Machthunger und Geldgier sind Geschwister, aber mit mir sind sie nicht verwandt.

Lean and red-haired, he has the face of a mechanic: detached, factual, a face that minds its own business and expects others to do the same.

The first opinion that is formed of a ruler’s intelligence is based on the quality of the men he has around him. When they are competent and loyal, he can always be considered wise, because he has been able to recognize their competence and to keep them loyal. But when they are otherwise, the prince is always open to adverse criticism; because his first mistake has been in the choice of his ministers.

The nobles have more foresight, and are most astute, they always act in time to safeguard their interests, and they take sides with the whom they expect to win. Again, a prince must always live with the same people, but he can well do without the nobles, since he can make and unmake them every day, increasing and lowering their standing at will.

Far from being a basis of unity, historical memory is one of the main grounds of contention between the parties.

The idiom of racial contempt that had become anathema in public discourse since the 1970s has been normalized by a president who sees moral equivalence between those who condemn White nationalism and those who assert it...and when we think about future elections we must include the possibility of sedition or an authoritarian coup.

The most striking and peculiar gesture of Trump’s racial politics was his decision to become the chief defender of Confederate symbolism. Trump’s knowledge of the Civil War is negligible, but events in Charlottesville had taught him to recognize Confederate symbols as the trademark of his most militant supporters.

He would apply to politics the methods he had used in business: rhetorical extravagance, unscrupulous manipulation, hard bargaining, unapologetic vindictiveness, the will to dominate or destroy competitors, and pretensions to grandeur…It was not simply that Trump knew how the country might learn to win again—he was the only man who could do it.

Political disorders can be quickly healed if they are seen well in advance (and only a prudent ruler has such foresight); when, for lack of a diagnosis, they are allowed to grow in such a way that everyone can recognize them, remedies are too late.

Passage of the Voting Rights Act was the climatic victory of the movement...Coupled with the 1964 [Civil Rights] act, it constituted something like a ‘Second Reconstruction,’ although it would take years of grassroots struggle to begin to realize its potential. The two acts negated the legal basis of Jim Crow and put the powers of the federal government behind those working to destroy it.

The hallmark of national myth is that we imaginatively enter its narrative and take upon ourselves the unfinished business of its heroes.

He saw historical truths being inculcated with 110-volt currents.

(Author’s note: What a waste to let this moment go by without trying to capture the sense of it, if only in outline, to be able to show someone: this is how it was, back then. This is how people destroyed themselves, how consciences slept, how people tiptoed between fear and responsibility, how writers tried to ignore things or never managed to write things...)

From the very heart of my people I can sense a growing cry: protect us; for our own sakes do what must be done to dispel this mounting anguish, this new fanaticism, this mystic madness among the younger generations. We were so at peace with the old order of things, secure in our labors, confident of our predictions…

I wish I’d had a father like me.

At seventeen, Andrea discovered her legs were provoking fistfights in the local pubs of Vassouras. One swarthy type actually cracked a fellow on the head with a pool cue because of those very legs.

‘My intention in going to Kent State,’ Tom later said, ‘was to study history, not become a part of it.’

The courtroom hushed as the bailiff played Strubbe’s recording of the terrible 12.53 seconds when guardsmen fired sixty-seven shots that killed four students and wounded nine others.

Along with this outpouring of sympathy came letters—some with return addresses—that threatened her life, that contained feces, that said, ‘People of your ilk who raise their children to be Communists should have expected this.’

He could feel nothing below his waist. ‘I knew I had a spinal cord injury. I just tried to stay calm until the shooting stopped.’…‘Someone roll me over,’ he said...‘The one thing I’ll never forget about that day is seeing the looks on the faces of the students who were standing over me, not knowing there were twelve other people out there shot, four of them bleeding profusely, lying dying on the ground.’

‘Because we’re black, and we know that when a white man has a gun and he sees a black, he gets uptight. He has a compulsion to shoot. And the black man gets shot, no matter what he’s done. Portage County is fille with immigrants from the South. To us, Portage County is Mississippi, and in Mississippi it’s easy for a black to stay indoors when whites are running around.’

He also opposed the draft—“for me, it’s Canada or jail, nothing else,” he told close friends—and considered applying for conscientious-objector status but changed his mind when he learned that if his application was rejected, he would immediately be drafted.

Wer Brasilien wirklich zu erleben weiß, der hat Schönheit genug für ein halbes Leben gesehen.

Aber das ist das Geheimnis von Bahia, daß hier noch von den Ahnen her sich das Religiöse mit dem Lusthaften im Blute geheimnisvoll verbindet, daß Erwartung oder monotone Erregung besonders bei den Negern und Mischlingen solche unerwartete Rauschempfänglichkeit auslöst…

Mit homerischem Eifer…

J & J’s carelessness and mistakes accelerated antivaccination sentiment that would bedevil the United States’ overall anti-Covid efforts and result in countless more unnecessary deaths.