Quotes About Politics

The public must be reduced to passivity in the political realm, but for submissiveness to become a reliable trait, it must be entrenched in the realm of belief as well.

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.

There is no demonstration against Zionism, because even the European Parliament regards such a demonstration as anti-Semitic.

One of the functions that things like professional sports play, in our society and others, is to offer an area to deflect people's attention from things that matter, so that the people in power can do what matters without public interference.

Just war theory has been converted into a form of apologetics for whatever atrocities your favored state is carrying out.

If you abandon the political arena, somebody is going to be there. Corporations aren't going to go home and join the PTA. They are going to run things.

international community"—a technical term referring to the U.S. government and whoever goes along with it.

the terms of political discourse are designed so as to prevent thought.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

There's a very simple point about arithmetic—if you happen to be in a swing state, a state where the outcome is indefinite, and you don't vote for, say, Clinton, that's equivalent to voting for Trump. That's arithmetic.

W]e have a democracy that uses free elections to put in place known obstructionists, and a media that disproportionately gives a forum to economically driven ideology over sound science.

Governments are bigger than ever, but under neoliberalism they have far less pretense to being concerned with addressing non-corporate interests. And

Aristotle was right—the way to overcome the paradox of democracy is by reducing inequality, not reducing democracy.

The Republican Party today has a catechism. If you want to be a candidate, with very rare exceptions, you have to repeat the catechism in lockstep uniformity: global warming isn't happening, no taxes on the rich. There are about ten things that you have to repeat, whether you believe them or not. Anybody who departs from them is in trouble.

Reagan sent money to the Contras to spend as they wish. National media remained unperturbed in accordance to the doctrine that the United States stands above any law of international agreement.

Classical liberalism was wrecked on the shoals of capitalism, but

On almost all issues, citizens could not identify the stands of the candidates--as intended.

Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, remain in power no matter whom you elect.

Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision making.

So you have to  ask, "Is it better to help the worse candidate to be elected?" You can make a case for doing that. In fact, there was an old Communist Party principle back in the  early 1930s: "the worse, the better." If you get the worse candidate in, it's going to be better, because then there will be more support for a revolution.

Aggression is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The ritual denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' states is replete with distortions and often outright lies.

no form of politics is worth our time until it helps struggling people get what they need, sustainably and reliably. All the better if you can do so without patriarchy and fundamentalism.

About half the population thinks that every person in Congress, including their own representative, should be thrown out. That's the center not holding.