Arsenal Famous Quotes

The appropriation of terms from psychology to discredit political opponents is part of the modern therapeutic culture that the sociologist Christopher Lasch criticized. Along with the concept of the authoritarian personality, the term “-phobe” for political opponents has been added to the arsenal of obloquy deployed by technocratic neoliberals against those who disagree with them. The coinage of the term “homophobia” by the psychologist George Weinberg in the 1970s has been followed by a proliferation of pseudoclinical terms in which those who hold viewpoints at variance with the left-libertarian social consensus of the transatlantic ruling class are understood to suffer from “phobias” of various kinds similar to the psychological disorders of agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), ornithophobia (fear of birds), and pentheraphobia (fear of one’s mother-in-law). The most famous use of this rhetorical strategy can be found in then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s leaked confidential remarks to an audience of donors at a fund-raiser in New York in 2016: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.” A disturbed young man who is driven by internal compulsions to harass and assault gay men is obviously different from a learned Orthodox Jewish rabbi who is kind to lesbians and gay men as individuals but opposes homosexuality, along with adultery, premarital sex, and masturbation, on theological grounds—but both are "homophobes.” A racist who opposes large-scale immigration because of its threat to the supposed ethnic purity of the national majority is obviously different from a non-racist trade unionist who thinks that immigrant numbers should be reduced to create tighter labor markets to the benefit of workers—but both are “xenophobes.” A Christian fundamentalist who believes that Muslims are infidels who will go to hell is obviously different from an atheist who believes that all religion is false—but both are “Islamophobes.” This blurring of important distinctions is not an accident. The purpose of describing political adversaries as “-phobes” is to medicalize politics and treat differing viewpoints as evidence of mental and emotional disorders. In the latter years of the Soviet Union, political dissidents were often diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” and then confined to psychiatric hospitals and drugged. According to the regime, anyone who criticized communism literally had to be insane. If those in today’s West who oppose the dominant consensus of technocratic neoliberalism are in fact emotionally and mentally disturbed, to the point that their maladjustment makes it unsafe to allow them to vote, then to be consistent, neoliberals should support the involuntary confinement, hospitalization, and medication of Trump voters and Brexit voters and other populist voters for their own good, as well as the good of society.

Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England; at least its townspeople say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, waggons, factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is famous for its iron-works. Besides the prison to which I have already referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions. It is very beautifully situated on the Alleghany River, over which there are two bridges; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled about the high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough. We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As usual it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad colonnade to every story of the house.

The Gārgīsaṃhitā section of the Yuga Purāṇa assesses the damage caused by the invasion of Śakas (Scythians) as follows: caturbhāgaṃ tu śastreṇa nāśayiṣyanti prāṇinām/ śakāḥ śeṣaṃ hariṣyanti caturbhāgaṃ svakaṃ puraṃ. Vinaṣṭe śakarājye tu śūnyā pṛthvī bhaviṣyati. In other words, these wars of conquest reduced the population of north India by ‘one half, 25 per cent being killed and 25 per cent being enslaved and carried away’.27 The Yuga Purāṇa further informs us that during this period even women took to ploughing, presumably as a result of the decimation.28 Indian opinion at the time seemed to blame Aśoka’s pacifism for this disaster, for the same Gārgīsaṃhitā declares: ‘the fool established the so-called conquest of dharma’ (sthāpayiṣyati mohātmā vijayaṃ nāma dhārmikam),29 though it does not refer to Aśoka by name. Even more telling is the fact that his favourite title ‘beloved of the gods’ (devānāmpiya) became a synonym for a ‘fool’ in classical Sanskrit.30 From this point of view, the fact that the famous praśasti or panegyric of Samudragupta by the Jaina Hariṣeṇa is inscribed on an Aśokan pillar is of more than mere archaeological interest. It may possess a historical dimension, as if the Hindu reaction had come full circle. An Indian empire had now once again emerged, after an earlier one had been virtually destroyed by the policies of Aśoka. It was now carving an account of its martial exploits on Aśoka’s pillar as if to say that is what emperors do, rather than converting arsenals into monasteries. Rama Shanker Tripathi notes that: [W]ith his ideal of war and aggrandisement, Samudragupta was the very antithesis of Aśoka, who stood for peace and piety. The former’s achievements formed the subject of an elaborate panegyric by the court poet Hariṣeṇa, and, strangely enough, Samudragupta chose to leave a permanent record of sanguinary conquests by the side of the ethical exhortations of Aśoka on one of his pillars, now inside the fort of Allahabad.31