The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he. - Karl Kraus
The rhetoric of state sanctioned violence. Beatings as political statement. Dead bodies piling up. When you know there are lists kept by your government, and you know that they know you are afraid, do you come together in peace and love to break their will, or do you hide by yourself hoping they come for your neighbor? These are the questions Naomi asks. Let's talk about something more pleasant, like philanthropy for the world we want, or better yet, Rabelais, as Bakhtin did writing under conditions bleaker than our own. I am also fond, as a writer, of Karl Kraus. Living in Vienna between the first world war and through the rise of Hitler, sleeping by day, reading the papers every evening, and writing satirical blurbs about them by night, Kraus said, "Satires the censor can understand are rightly condemned." On the positive side, we who are educated in the liberal arts, the arts of liberality and freedom, will learn in the next few years to write and read much better. In fact, the whole history of literature and philosophy light up when you see that most of the great ones wrote at risk. Poor Jesus. The parables were a career limiting move. I celebrate Diogenes, not only because he lived in a Barrel, like me in my Dumpster, and had a sense of humor, and confronted, Alexander, the most successful empire builder of all time, but also because Diogenes died in his sleep in his nineties. Socrates could not make that claim. And they called Diogenes mad! Cicero was a better rhetorician, supposedly, but his hands and head were nailed to the rostrum in the Senate for speaking up for the Republic in an age of dictatorships. We might do well to tend our own garden. Why make good points and end up dead? If we keep our mouths shut, and act normal, everything will probably turn out for the best.
