There are a lot of people who believe that in this world you either fuck other people, or get fucked. The world is full of predators, and if you aren’t victimizing someone, you’ll get victimized.
After all, if you hurt someone, that means you’re stronger than them, and mean, and others will be scared of you.
Pretty much how the US, indeed all Empires, operate.
Kill or be killed, this isn’t. If someone attacks you, or someone else, and you kill someone in self defense, well, that’s not the same thing.
Rape’s a good case, because there’s never justification for rape. It’s taking pleasure from someone else’s degradation, and it makes you, well, evil.
I’d argue the same is true of torture. (No, torture doesn’t work for extracting information.)
And then there’s murder. Not self defense, but say joining a military and going and killing a bunch of innocent people. Or, on your own behalf or the behalf of some church or belief or company, killing people. The purest example is certain types of draft: “you kill for us or we kill you.” Perhaps its less than that “kill for us or we throw you in prison” or “kill for us or we impoverish you.”
There are less pure versions. You work for a company which pollutes or poisons or makes products designed for murder. You know (or should know) that people will die because of the pollution. Working for cigarette companies, perhaps. Manufacturers who leach cancerous poisons into the air, water and land. Defense contractors for aggressive countries.
Or perhaps you’re just an abuser. A prison guard, say, in a nation where abuse and what amounts to torture of prisoners is routine.
A propagandist, who provides justification for war and war crimes.
We all make compromises, I think. We all do things to survive we’d rather not do.
But where’s the line?
What is there that you won’t do?
Is it murder? Is it mass murder for your nation? (Don’t pretend that America has had a war of self-defense in generations.) Is it producing harmful products because you need a job? Is it lying about evil to justify it? Is it looking the other way?
I think we all need to decide. Personally if a gun was on me and they said “you rape that person, or you get raped” I hope I’d choose to be raped. I’d rather be a victim than victimizer, at least when it comes to such an abominable act.
Would I join a draft to go kill Iranians and help kill Palestinians? No.
I admire Israelis who go to prison rather than join the IDF.
Muhammad Ali, refusing the draft for Vietnam:
My conscious won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father… Shoot them for what? …How can I shoot them, the little poor black people, poor little babies and children and women … Just take me to jail.
What’s your line? What would you refuse to do even if it meant you’d become a victim?
Everyone reads these articles for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
Oakchair
60 years ago an impoverished, dyslexic, professional boxer, with a high school education was more eloquent and insightful than college educated people are today.
Wonder what they put in the water and everyone’s bodies to accomplish that? Well, I actually don’t wonder.
bruce wilder
The erosion starts with piling up a high hill of impractical purity of moral idealism, which makes it difficult to navigate the moral terrain farther down the landscape, where we must live not as angels but as beasts. “Predators” by metabolism. IAs soon as pragmatism can be invoked with regard to hard cases, the very legitimacy of moral idealism can be called into question. And, you can be sure Power will call whenever convenient to its interests.
I seriously question the utility of a philosophical project that seeks moral clarity in imagining individual will acting in heroic extremes. I suspect the subversive wish-fulfillment underlying, for example, the artistic creation of an imaginary rascal like the fictional Schindler. Surveys reveal that fans do not even recognize that Schindler was fictional. Not fictionalized — fictional. Maybe you can nurture individual moral agency with such parables, but I doubt it.
Jan Wiklund
If I’m not wrong, the proposition the text started with is a definition of sociopath.
StewartM
I think we all need to decide. Personally if a gun was on me and they said “you rape that person, or you get raped” I hope I’d choose to be raped. I’d rather be a victim than victimizer, at least when it comes to such an abominable act.
For me that would be easy, as long as the “rape” is just non-consensual sex–I’d get raped. If, it involves permanent disfigurement, other violence, torture, and death, then it’s a much harder choice. It wouldn’t be the most pleasant 15 or 30 minutes of my life, but that’s not the hardest choice.
The hardest choice for me would be “either torture/kill/hurt this person, or we will do the same to a loved one of yours while you watch.”
I have a female relative who came close to being kidnapped and feared that she would be raped. But she also feared that she would be murdered afterwards. The two fears are often concurrent. Luckily, she managed to bolt from the car that they had her in and run off.
I also had an elderly female relative living by herself, who was taken by a burglar one night, had a pillowcase thrown over her head, and was led around her house at gunpoint with the burglar threatening to shoot her if she didn’t reveal where her valuables where.
My cousin (about my age at the time, c. 19 or 20) happened to return to her house that very night, and struggled with the burglar, who got the upper hand. My elderly relative by that time had gotten the pillowcase off her head, only to see that the burglar had my cousin face down on the floor and was reaching for his gun to execute the young man. She quickly intruded, resulting in his gun going off prematurely and the bullet grazing her arm. The burglar then fled the house, leaving her and my cousin alive.
After that, she sold the house and moved in with one of her married adult children. She was emotionally scarred by that event and couldn’t stand to be alone again ever again—quite understandably.
(I had a minor part in this story–I was working that summer while out of college, and I visited her early that evening, and she invited me to drop in when I got back. It was nearly 11 pm when I was heading back, and the lights were on in her house, and I just started to pull the car into her driveway, and then thought: “I have to be at work at 7 am, and she’s probably heading to bed, so I won’t bother her”. So I could have walked into that situation with my cousin, or by myself; and I have no idea how what outcome that would have led to).
Like & Subscribe
Surveys reveal that fans do not even recognize that Schindler was fictional. Not fictionalized — fictional. Maybe you can nurture individual moral agency with such parables, but I doubt it.
Huh? Please elaborate. Do you mean to say the Oskar Schindler story is a Zionist ruse?
Geoff Dewan
Was Schindler a real person as depicted in “Schindler’s List”?
Yes, Oskar Schindler was a real person and a German industrialist who saved over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust.
Reddit
·r/AskHistorians
+3
Key Realities vs. Film Depiction:
The “List”: The famous list was actually compiled by Jewish accountant Mietek Pemper and others, rather than Schindler typing it himself, though he authorized and facilitated it.
Motivations: Schindler was a member of the Nazi party and an Abwehr (military intelligence) spy who initially came to Krakow to profit from the war.
His Transformation: He risked his wealth and life, eventually spending his fortune to bribe Nazi officials to protect his workers, and was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Post-War Life: Following the war, Schindler’s business ventures failed, and he was supported by the Jewish people he rescued until he died in 1974.
Wife’s Role: The film downplays the significant role his wife, Emilie Schindler, played in aiding his efforts.
Reddit
·r/history
+6
Schindler’s List is based on the 1982 novel ‘Schindler’s Ark’ by Thomas Keneally, which utilized testimonies from survivors, known as “Schindlerjuden” (Schindler Jews).
EBSCO
cc
The Western predators have had a feast for 500 years. Now the Rest of the World have developed defences and have a chance to break free of the predators hegemony. Picture a pack of hyenas unable to go after a strong, cohesive herd of water buffalo, facing a wall of horns and hooves.
The hyenas can now only go after small, poor, isolated countries like Venezuela or Cuba that are, unfortunately, not within the protective circle.
> “Defense contractors for aggressive countries.”
Let’s stop using the Western/Anglo propaganda euphemism “defense” when we can easily use the more accurate term “military contractors”.
> “I admire Israelis who go to prison rather than join the IDF.”
In agreement, but let’s stop propagating the brain-washing term “IDF” when we can easily, and more clearly, just say “the Israeli military”. There’s nothing defensive about that genocidal colonial venture.
“Zionism, at its base, is the belief in Jewish supremacy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and just like any other ideology that subscribes to racial, national or religious supremacy, it is illegitimate.”
– Gideon Levy
“Zionism turned its back on the indigenous population that lived in Palestine from its early days – ever since the days of “the conquest of labor,” calling for Jews to work in agriculture and industry – the first Zionist dispossession. Long before the Arab riots of 1929 and the Holocaust, the movement sought to dispossess and expel the local population.”
– Gideon Levy
When aggressive, expansionist, genocidal countries like the US and Israel use the word “defense” every chance they can, it’s wolves in sheep’s clothing. Stop falling for the Anglo-Zionist brainwashing, and propagating it for them.
But agree with Ian’s post: those that work for Western hegemonic establishments – ex. CIA, State Department, War Department, the Canadian/European subsidiaries of the above, establishment think tanks, establishment news media, etc. – are accepting to be well-paid in service to a murderous, genocidal, predatorial Empire – and need to stop turning a blind eye to that in order to land their cushy pensions. They probably all tell themselves, “If I don’t do it, someone else will” (like Jacob/”Jakub” the American/Israeli settler from Brooklyn as he steals a Palestinian woman’s home.)
cc
Left out the link for Jacob/”Jakub” from Brooklyn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8
Purple Library Guy
I understand there is a small literature on the idea of “moral injury”–apparently military people tend to get worse PTSD from having done horrible, evil things than from having horrible things happen to them. No doubt this is less the case if people either are or can fairly successfully turn themselves into psychopaths, or if they can successfully dehumanize the victims.
Hence the systematic Israeli whole-society effort to convince themselves that Palestinians are vermin that one need not feel bad about murdering. The US changes victims too often for that to really work, so they supplement it with this sort of studied ignorance and lack of reflection–gung ho, valorizing violence and spectacle, treat it all as a video game, pretending to themselves that there isn’t really anyone receiving that bullet or that bomb, a sort of yahoo solipsism.
Mark Level
Important thread, nicely done again, I have some thoughts.
As to the Fuck ‘Em Over or Get Fucked Mentality, the graphic artist and Leftist propagandist Seth Tobocman, who participated in defending the homeless in Tompkins Square Park in the 80s-90s, possibly later, did a great graphic, I will link it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Have-Fuck-People-Survive/dp/1849350043
My apologies that it came up on Bezos’ site, see it’s hard NOT to interact with the Fuckers online. “You don’t have to fuck people over to survive”, he made 1,000s of these stickers, put them up around NYC, sold them for small amounts and mailed them to other cities, other Lefties, Anarchists, I saw them in San Francisco & Oakland fairly often.
Somebody prior, the weirdo pervert WH Auden (a severely repressed gay man, he sometimes had flings, consensual, with women ‘coz he was a superstar in poetry, a big deal during the 1920s-40s), in his poem September 1, 1939 (I expect most of the audience knows that date; we even have on fan of that date’s events, a certain LAS),
Auden said “Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.” Clear as crystal though he later rejected the poem, he didn’t like being too “political.” (Okay, maybe I’m being unfair to LAS? In reality he likes Poles, is genocidal towards all Russians who aren’t traitors. But when knew on here he did taunt me repeatedly with the nonsense that “Hitler punked Stalin with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”, just idiocy.)
Yes, as to rape it’s goddamn evil. Of the 11 or so long-term lovers I had in my younger days, over half experienced molestation or rape, probably 7 or 8. I had a really gorgeous German girlfriend from age 29-33, it was a tricky relationship coz she had a “type”, she was already married to a younger, smaller and less intelligent version of that type, then met me when she had 2 small children. We started banging on days her kids were at daycare, I was a substitute teacher at the time, we’d meet and fuck, I’d smoke a bit of pot first so I could last longer in the sack, she would rarely join in on that. Her hubby found out, tried to beat me up, luckily neither of us got hurt badly as my roomates intervened to stop the fight. I told him I didn’t want to, but would, lucky it ended early. She and I continued on and off for 4 more years, until she was sleeping with him again (which I didn’t in any way resent, I knew I was the better man and she knew it too), but then I got a 2nd girlfriend, another tall, slim, European (Brit) redhead who was a dancer. She was a Scorpio, went ballistic with rage, how dare I? I just noted you got one and one on the side, I have the same right. Anyway, she told me that she’d been hitchiking around with another female friend in Spain when she was like 17, both girls got raped. She wasn’t overly traumatized by it as far as I could tell, she only even told me about it once, but she was pretty conventional in the bedroom, had some level of inner repression, might’ve been that, or not.
The love of my life, who I was also with for 4 years, mostly on sometimes off, had been molested by family member(s) as a child, had clear memories of it. Sometimes she’d be triggered by something and avoid sex. She was multi-orgasmic, the best lover I ever had the rest of the time. Her family were Virginia hillbillies, one time she brought a boyfriend home in High School and her dad threw the boy out immediately as he knew him. Dad sold pot, the kid was one of his subordinate dealers, kind of hypocritical.
I had a Honduran girlfriend when I was 24, had already been to Nicaragua, Mexico etc., met her in college, she was 19 so initially I was cautious, didn’t want to be a “cradle robber.” She was semi-conventional in Catholic morality, claimed Virginity was a positive good for women, I didn’t understand that, may’ve referenced Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. We went slow, making out first, when the big event arrived I didn’t break her hymen, so evidently she’d had experience before we started. Never raped, her mom was the Honduran ambassador in New Orleans, dad dead, a very sheltered upbringing.
I won’t list all of ’em, here’s the 4th and last– I had a Missippi (deliberate misspelling) gf, she picked me up in a bar when I was 27 or so, very full-figured, generally not my type, but I made an exception. Small world, one of my neighbors was dating one of her best friends, a petite blonde. So she got raped by a black man after we’d been together for 2-3 months. I understood why she was traumatized and very angry, totally justified, but when she started saying “That Nigger” should be killed I just decided to end it. Maybe that was shallow of me? I just don’t do well with racists, she became a stereotype.
I’ve never been raped, never raped anyone, so I cannot speak to that.
Torture and killing– at one time I thought Qanon was insane, but sometimes the blind pig actually finds an acorn. I do now believe (I cannot know) that the Epstein emails about “pizza” may’ve been about cannibalism, the “soda” ones possibly blood drinking or adrenachrome. Pier Paolo Pasolini is certainly in my top 25 filmmakers and directors, but I could never bring myself to watch “Salo”, there are things that are too intense even for me. Some people dedicate themselves to becoming literal Monsters, pair up with their kind to rape, torture, etc.
IDF, IOF, what’s the difference. Utter predators, not a scintilla of humanity or empathy. Would stab their own mothers in the back if they annoyed them. Israeli Jets bomb a synagogue in Iran, so much for “protecting Jewish lives”!!
I was talking about Unionism and my experience getting hassled by bad (not all, there were a few decent ones) administrators– the School and District I was in for the final 22 years of my career were both excellent when I signed a contract, became top-heavy with do-nothing admin, abusive assholes. I had a Principal who screamed at people he had just met, in front of witnesses, dude had a serious chip on his shoulder, hate-on for the world. A pal of mine knew his family, said only one other member of his extended family, kids, wife and ex-wives, would even talk to him, everyone else shunned him as abusive shit.
The Principal who signed me was a Prince, liked by all, remembered everyone’s name, a model of calm and kindness, only one major flaw– When parents went after teachers for no reason (You think MY child isn’t the greatest human being who ever lived? How dare you?) he would not defend any of them, would sometimes even assist the parents, a coward. He never did it to me, but I had very few problems with students, the only ones I did have problems with had them with everyone and were on the short list for the “Alternative School.”
But as my District decayed, due to Neoliberalism, 1999-2023, it became very toxic, it was Kiss-Up/ Kick Down in certain programs and departments, there was a Bully Couple, he was a big dude, started out as a Coach, she was a very smart Math teacher. He was openly bigoted and racist, but moved up in the world once he got his BA in science. We had one suck-up, racist principal, a runty ex-alcoholic, ex-druggy, ex-gambler who was in some insane Christian Fundie Cult (think Mike Pence) and went after 4 WoCs (Women of Color) at our school, for the entire 8 years he was there until 2 Newspaper stories documented his abuse first, of students, next of staff. The Science-Math pair were worshipped by him, they were the JFK and Jackie of the school.
One time I needed some info from her, they kinda didn’t like me coz they knew I was a Leftie. I should’ve shared that when the Librarian before me solicited a fave books list from staff, he shared some Rick Warren shit!! A scammer preacher who basically drove his own gay son to suicide. So she wouldn’t share this one budget # I needed to do something for me, I had a smart Assistant who somehow had all the access, and the 2 of us dug in and looked . . . Over 65% of the discretionary budget this guy had to support teachers went to 3 people, “Big Jimbo” as we all knew him, his wife, and his younger lover who he’d thrown his wife aside for by that time, and brought into the staff!! I had been in the History dept. before that, the prior year they got like $68 for printing from this turd and these 3 people were given like $60,000 as individuals to buy laser printers, anything they wanted.
The stooge had been kicked out and the new principal, the chip-on-his-shoulder black man who everyone could see was manic depressive came in. The very first day Mr. G I will call him, was there, Big Jimbo came in to his office basically unannounced, told the man He, Jimbo was the Big Dog at this school, he needed to be as suppliant to his orders as the last Principal was!! Well Mr. G was a pure asshole but he had EVERY right to see this power play as pure racism, which it was. But when I revealed the inequity of budgets and the favoritism of the prior admin, he was told by somebody at the District to tamp the whole thing down, acknowledge the matter and pledge to do better.
Now, as I said within the school culture there was lot’s of Kiss Up/Kick Down. I think the Math Dept. and the PE dept. were the worst. In the math dept. there was a very kind-hearted but timid lady named Marianne, she was openly bullied at dept. meetings by 2 nasty colleagues, cried some times but never fought back. I befriended a former student after he’d graduated, once he was of legal age he used to go to shows and bars with the cool Art teacher and me, he told me that he had one of these ladies as a teacher, she was an utter bitch to him, she would only help her “favorites”, no time to help him off the clock, only the favorites got after-school help.
Glad that Schindler controversy got settled upthread. I mostly don’t admire Spielberg, but thought that was overall a pretty good film. The moral is clear as glass, a Badly Flawed Man sees overwhelming injustice, becomes morally better and tries to save innocent life. (But repeating myself, a better film about the time is Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book about the Dutch Resistance. It is a direct response to Schindler, the heroine is a slutty, beautiful woman, it ends with a very ironic twist as the Jewish heroine barely survives.)
Thanks to cc for the Gideon Levy quotes, also clear as day to the entire world by now.
Purple Library Guy makes a very good point, this references back to Ian’s mention of prison guards. These bastards, and cops, have some of the highest domestic abuse rates known, and that includes the lady cops too. When your Job Description makes you a sociopath.
Oh, has anyone read Jim Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me”? Great noir portrayal of a Texas small-town cop who commits a revenge murder against someone who killed his brother, this leads to a chain of other killings to cover it up, including eventually his own wife!! Harrowing stuff, but with psychological depth, fairly convincing.
Lastly, as to Ian’s point about professional evil: Today I had (another) tech issue, shut out of something I subscribe to, I called support, quickly got it, but had to clear my browser to get back in. I did so, then was shut out of my main mail, Yahoo!! “Support” is all AI drivel and I may be locked out for weeks, maybe forever? So I went in, I had the 6 digit Security Code they’d sent to my other account, good for an hour. The prompt lied, said they had “High Call Volume,” I waited over 20 minutes til it just hung up on me. Then I got thru on 2nd try after about 15 minutes, I put in the code correctly, and it just put me in the proverbial “Death Loop.” As soon as I did one thing, it would go BACK to the last step and do that, then enter the # again, it was just designed to steal my time and fuck me over.
These people do need to be lined up and executed where there are actual revolutions, OR we could do the relatively humane thing and make them work outdoors for 20 years, learn what it’s like to be Los de Abajo, the Underdogs, and reform from within.
Last note. Elon flew with Trump to Ghina today, just open stealing by this scum. I kinda sorta thought the Elon tweet, “Yes, Donald Trump is in the Epstein Files” might’ve created a divide, but No. These scum travel and do their predation together. I am frankly very surprised that Xi will even receive the Donald while “We’re like pirates!!” Donald is stealing their oil. I expect he will get a bad dressing down in private like he did once previously however.
Mark Level
https://www.reddit.com/r/yahoo/comments/15lto55/yahoo_locked_me_out_of_my_account_for_no_reason/
Yeah, it’s a total scam, make you pay more to get access back. Nothing but bots at the “support service”. I signed IN with Google, but they blocked me even though Google knows nearly everything about my identity. I found one prompt to get access back from the thread, will try it tomorrow. It was my main account, so losing it is a real setback. Corporations have a License to Be Evil, Steal, why would anyone expect them not to indulge that.
Oh, back to cops. They often use their power to stalk ex-lovers, or women they have raped or want to rape. Never give a Criminal a gun. Never give a head of state Atom Bombs.
Alphonse
“I’d rather be a victim than victimizer”
Would you torture a terrorist to stop a ticking bomb?
These are not realistic scenarios. In movies there are villains who set out to do evil. In life, not so much. In reality, the victimizer nearly always feels that he is the victim.
The Germans felt that they were the victims of the Versailles treaty. The Zionists felt they were the victims of the Nazis. Both were correct. The choice to harm others almost always begins not with an intent to do evil but with a desire to defend against wrong.
We all have this instinct. It is human nature. Heroic narratives about victimizer and victim are no innoculation. On the contrary, they set one up for righteousness and revenge.
I suggest that the history of mass atrocities points to three hints that one may be the victimizer. One: Am I a victim? Two: Am I part of a consensus? Do the people around me feel as I do? Three: Do I feel that I am right? Do my choices make me feel good? If any or all of these conditions apply, you should ask yourself whether you are in fact, in addition to perhaps truly being a victim, on the path to becoming a perpetrator.
Doubt is the effective defence against doing evil. Taking the right path is hard. It hurts. It is uncertain. It is lonely. The irony is that doubt is also a barrier to taking the action necessary to do good. But that’s how it is.
mago
Thanks cc. Labeling and language matters.
Thank you Ian for another thoughtful post.
A while back you wrote about rape, murder and morality, and some commentators actually defended rape in some cases, if I remember correctly.. Wtf? (Can’t help but think about the Stone’s song Gimme Shelter. Rape and murder/it’s just a shot away,)
There’s a story about the Buddha Shakyamuni who in a former life as a ship’s captain killed a person whose actions threatened the crew’s lives, and said murder was deemed meritorious since it was passion free and served the greater good.
The prison guards inflicting sexual abuse and torture surely live in a nightmare world of their own creation, although it could be argued that they’re victims of larger institutional and cultural powers. Not gonna parse it. Suffering is suffering everywhere you find it.
Don’t know where it ends or how, but it’s up 2 you and me.
bruce wilder
As my friend, Maria Altmann once famously said, “First, we need a true story . . .”
bruce wilder
just came from a Substack essay which was discussing the plausibility of charges that Israeli guards have used dogs to sexually violate prisoners. Cited in support — Judith Miller reporting on precedent in the holocaust. Yes, Judith Miller published a holocaust book in 1990.
WMD Judith Miller.
Like & Subscribe
But repeating myself, a better film about the time is Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book about the Dutch Resistance. It is a direct response to Schindler, the heroine is a slutty, beautiful woman, it ends with a very ironic twist as the Jewish heroine barely survives.
Or better yet, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
It doesn’t seek to lure a passive, indifferent audience with colorful characters, but instead is honest and forthright in regard to the banality of evil and resistance to it. After all, Sophie, like Hedges, albeit she was Lutheran versus Presbyterian, was the progeny of a Brahmin caste of uptight honkies. You can’t get much more boring than that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jew7U8IF94Y
Mark Level
Thanks, LAS, I appreciate the share and will look into it.
To Mago & LAS and others, I highly recommend (maybe you’ve already seen it but worth a re-read) Voltaire’s Candide. Leibniz as a Christian believed we live in “the best of all possible world’s”, God’s gift to us pathetic humans. In Candide, the narrator and his friends and lovers find out how bogus that belief is, kidnapped and taken to Brazil to be a slave, assaulted, possibly rape hinted at, one friend loses his leg while he’s enslaved, harrowing. “Dr. Pangloss” is his stand in for Liebniz, prattles on endlessly about TBOAPW, while the evidence of the hero’s eyes and experience contradict that at every turn. See an exposition of the debate here–
https://www.thecollector.com/is-this-best-all-possible-worlds-leibniz-voltaire/
I was reading Voltaire in my early to mid-20s, helped my intellectual growth a great deal. I also recommend the Islamic tale he rewrote about a traveler who comes across an Angel who does demonic acts. So the protagonist has to swim across a small lake, is in danger of drowning, the (secret) angel dives in and saves his life, then they travel together. Some nice people take them in for the night, he burns down their domicile, but it was an act of Charity, there is buried treasure they find beneath the ashes and they are richer than ever. Then the Angel murders a child they meet in cold blood, justifies it to his new friend, basically he knew that child would grow into a Hitler or Bibi Netanyahu type, he actually saved multiple lives. Can’t recall the name of that fun fiction, but those with an interest can Goggle and find it.
I esteem Voltaire above most of his Enlightenment contemporaries but from time to time, like most, he had a poor take. He had a pathetic death, when he was very sick in Paris on his death-bed, he tried to “reconcile with the church”, an imaginary Heaven ticket, after the “Evil” of spreading rationality (which, caveat, can be taken too far, intuition and other abilities need to be in the stew), a coward unlike James Joyce, who when a vampire priest was brought in minutes before his death said simply, “Go away.”
Earlier in life (trigger warning for LAS), Voltaire advised Catherine the Great on bringing Enlightenment ideas to very backward Russia, she tried to force it on the lower orders, and as we could all expect, that mostly failed in the short term, may have led to Peter the Great going to the Niederlands later and stealing their ideas and technology, however, so smart. He taught Cath that you can “force people to be enlightened”, haha, as Schiller said, against Stupidity, the Gods contend in vain.
A real asshole Enlightenment Philosopher was Rene Descartes, mago and I have previously discussed his sick “Christian” belief that animals have no souls, thus can be tortured and vivisected alive for an audience, their sounds of pain are automatic grinding of machines, they have no feelings. He did some great work in optics and other areas, meteorology, etc. but a real hateful cunt. He got a fitting death though, Queen Christina of Sweden employed him as a tutor, he was in Stockholm for some time, caught his death pnuemonia from the cold and died ignominiously, karma catches us all.
Don’t be Evil like the Cunts at Alphabet, Amazon, the Goggle machine, Tesla etc. That shit will catch up with you.
shagggz
@Mark: Hymens do not reliably bleed upon first coitus. It’s a myth that they do.
Also, why do you refer to China as Ghina?
Purple Library Guy
@Alphonse It should be noted that your point is misleading, in that it implies some sort of revenge when no such thing is happening. Sure, the Germans were the victims of the Versailles Treaty. They were NOT the victims of the Jews. And Hitler, from back when he was writing Mein Kampf, was clear that the Jews thing was a useful lie, victimizing them a means to an end, although he may have come to believe his own drivel in the end. Meanwhile yes, the Zionists were the victims of the Nazis . . . but they were NOT the victims of the Palestinians. They decided committing atrocities against the Palestinians was a worthwhile way to achieve their ends.
And a whole lot of the atrocities happening in the world were instigated by incredibly rich people who grew up rich and weren’t never the victim of nobody. US atrocities in defence of their already filthy rich corporations’ rights to accumulate even more have added up to many millions of deaths over the years, at least a couple Holocausts’ worth.