“hmm, how can we, the capitalist victors of WW2, ensure we keep the rising tides of communism at bay in Europe? Oh you’re telling me there’s a whole country full of fascists eager to redeem themselves in our eyes? How convenient…”

His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counselled one and all, and everyone said “Amen.

• Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I just learned it from you

I thought we were authoritarians

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][5

And by “reading stories”, they mean “making assumptions after reading a post”

all my valor, stolen

The real Documenting a new wave of fascist apologia in the west was the friends we made along the way

Not pictured: 33% of the population who didn’t bother voting because the blue party offered them nothing

But we’re the problem

Notes for communist revolutionaries:

If you don’t use an iron fist, your detractors will say you use an iron fist to crush dissent and they will manipulate the will of the people against you. After you fail and your supporters are rounded up and executed, they’ll blame the failure on your ruthless authoritarianism.

If you use an iron fist, your detractors will say you use an iron fist to crush dissent, and you may lose favor among the people. You may find yourself doing questionable acts to hold onto power. However, you may actually succeed. Your detractors will say you are a ruthless authoritarian.

Sucks for the blood spilled in the second choice, but at least you’ll have something to show for it when the dust settles