The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.

That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.

When everyone says the same thing about some complex topic, what should come to your mind is, 'wait a minute, nothing can be that simple, something's wrong.' That's the immediate light that should go off in your brain when you ever hear unanimity on some complex topic." (The Ezra Klein Show 2021/04/23)

The threat of China is not military. The threat of China is they can’t be intimidated. Europe you can intimidate. When the US tries to get people to stop investing in Iran, European companies pull out, China disregards it. You look at history and understand why: China has been around for 4,000 years and just doesn’t give a damn. You can’t intimidate them — it’s driving people in Washington berserk. Yet of all the major powers, China has been the least aggressive militarily.

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors [...] I don't usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this 'hopey changey' stuff, she was right, there was nothing there. And it was understood by the people who run the political system, and so it's no great secret that the US electoral system is mainly a public relations extravaganza...it's sort of a marketing affair.

المثقف من حمل الحقيقة في وجه القوة ('cultured from carrying the truth in the face of power')

It is useful to remember that no matter where we turn, there is rarely any shortage of elevated ideals to accompany the resort to violence.

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.