Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.
If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible
“We can,
Each of us,
Do the impossible
As long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before.”
~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler This fictitious president actually says he wants to “Make American Great Again” — and Parable of the Talents was published in 2001. When the president’s radical followers burn down communities he “condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want.” That sounds an awful lot like when Trump said “there are some very fine people on both sides” after a neo-Nazis caused chaos in Virginia. And another Trump tactic is highlighted by Lauren:
Once [the president has] made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.
First they came for the strange immigrants, and I spoke out, because I’ve read the damn poem before and I know how it ends.
