“
I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.
”
”
Warren Buffett
“
He believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan’s problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected.
”
”
Malala Yousafzai (I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban)
“
I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.
”
”
Warren Buffett
“
Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again). There were no term limits, and those two geezers had been doing a kick-ass job of protecting user rights for over a decade.
”
”
Ernest Cline (Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1))
“
The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about “social justice” all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Controversial Essays)
“
The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular.
”
”
Jay Leno
“
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems—of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Dismantling America: and other controversial essays)
“
In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues. . . No one is going to hold up a cigarette lighter in a stadium to the tune of "mourn together, suffer together." City on a hill, though -- that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we ARE Ronald Reagan.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (The Wordy Shipmates)
“
His sisters -- my aunts -- did not go to school at all, just like millions of girls in my country. Education had been a great gift for him. He believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan's problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected. He believed schooling should be available for all, rich and poor, boys and girls. The school that my father dreamed of would have desks and a library, computers, bright posters on the walls and, most important, washrooms.
”
”
Malala Yousafzai (I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban)
“
We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.
”
”
Jean-Claude Juncker
“
The only way I won't be re-elected is if I were found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
”
”
Edwin Edwards
“
If a prosecutor gets caught cheating, he either gets reelected or elevated to the bench. Our system never holds a bad prosecutor accountable.
”
”
John Grisham (Rogue Lawyer)
“
for his reelection because he obviously sympathized with those who, like herself, were hard of hearing. Following the press conference, Edward chaired a
”
”
Jeffrey Archer (The Prodigal Daughter (Kane & Abel, #2))
“
I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.
”
”
George Soros
“
Only six Black people in American history just went out and won a U.S. Senate seat via popular vote (though Scott eventually won a reelection campaign). Black people have had more prophets than goddamn senators.
”
”
Elie Mystal (Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution)
“
A month after it ended, President Johnson decided not to seek reelection, and Westmoreland would shortly thereafter be removed as its commander. Richard Nixon was elected president eight months later mendaciously promising not victory, but a secret plan to bring the war to an “honorable end.
”
”
Mark Bowden (Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam)
“
It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work - much like our politicians - and yet keep winning re-election to their golden thrones in heaven year after year.
”
”
Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)
“
The only thing more dangerous than a politician who thinks about re-election, is a politician who doesn't think about re-election.
”
”
James Carville
“
I'm sixty-nine years old, and I have no plans to run for reelection. Do you think I give a damn?
”
”
John Hart (The King of Lies)
“
I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again). There were no term limits, and those two geezers had been doing a kick-ass job of protecting user rights for over a decade.
”
”
Ernest Cline (Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1))
“
if a defense lawyer is caught cheating, he or she gets nailed with sanctions by the court, reprimanded by the state bar association, maybe even indicted. If a prosecutor gets caught cheating, he either gets reelected or elevated to the bench.
”
”
John Grisham (Rogue Lawyer)
“
Now there are some, and I don't just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist. Some believe that none of them exist. There's just us and an ocean of darkness around us. I'm no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work - much like our politicians - and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year. That's not to say I don't respect them, Mr. Premier! Don't you ever let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull. My country is the kind where it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time.
”
”
Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)
“
Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.
”
”
Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6))
“
Never re-elect anybody
”
”
Kinky Friedman
“
Each day they tracked down killers. Each day they put their own lives on the line. And in return they were scapegoated. Chained to the ground, food for politicians looking for reelection.
”
”
Louise Penny (All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #16))
“
Who cares, anymore? Nobody believes anything politicians say. It’s not like they’re working for us, all they do after they get into office is run for reelection. Money, money, money, that’s all it’s about.
”
”
Dana Stabenow (Midnight Come Again)
“
These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.
Wait—Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.
And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting—the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending—has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.
”
”
Paul Krugman
“
Trump only cares how the covid-19 pandemic affects him, his bank account, and his chances of getting re-elected.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America)
“
Uncivil, incompetent in fulfilling basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned, often putting self (and reelection) before country—this was my view of the majority of the United States Congress.
”
”
Robert M. Gates (Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War)
“
Because of racism, he can't govern effectively' is not a great argument for re-election.
”
”
James Taranto
“
A ruling government can't afford to publish history
in a version which lessens its' chance for reelection.
”
”
Toba Beta (Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza)
“
faithless priests molesting children, politicians riding to reelection by the agitation of class envy: All these and numerous
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Face)
“
Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again).
”
”
Ernest Cline (Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1))
“
Even President Woodrow Wilson was a devotee: when asked in 1914 whether he would be reelected, Wilson replied, “The Ouija board says yes.
”
”
Ruth Franklin (Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life)
“
Bureaucrats and politicians, rather than making decisions, were responding to cues with automatic routines in order to get rewards such as promotions or reelection.
”
”
Charles Duhigg
“
Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton
”
”
Ernest Cline (Ready Player One)
“
[Theodore] Roosevelt had long ago discovered that the more provincial the supplicants, the less able were they to understand that their need was not unique: that he was not yearning to travel two thousand miles on bad trains to support the reelection campaign of a county sheriff, or to address the congregation of a new chapel in a landscape with no trees. His refusal, no matter how elaborately apologetic, was received more often in puzzlement than anger. Imaginatively challenged folks, for whom crossing a state line amounted to foreign travel, could not conceive that the gray-blue eyes inspecting them had, over the past year, similarly scrutinized Nandi warriors, Arab mullahs, Magyar landowners, French marshals, Prussian academics, or practically any monarch or minister of consequence in Europe -- not to mention the maquettes in Rodin’s studio, and whatever dark truths flickered in the gaze of dying lions.
From COLONEL ROOSEVELT, p. 104.
”
”
Edmund Morris (Colonel Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt))
“
Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.
Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.
”
”
Neil Gaiman
“
I wrote that certain things were leaving me nauseated. I said that judges made me feel that way. Not most of them but all of them. I said that you for example, the judge I'm writing this to, made me feel nauseated. The nausea came from understanding that people produced by every conceivable advantage got to decide whether someone like Jalen lived or died and what was worse was they never fucking seemed to decide that the person should live, that a person's life, any person, was more important than whether some fat fuck at a country club thought you were hard enough on crime or whether you continue to get sufficient reelection campaign contributions you worthless retarded piece of shit. Why should you be allowed to decide anything beyond what you have for lunch you mental infant?
”
”
Sergio de la Pava (A Naked Singularity)
“
It was Joseph Overton, an American lawyer, who first explained the mechanisms of uppercase Politics in the 1990s. He began with a simple question: Why is it that so many good ideas don’t get taken seriously? Overton realized that politicians, provided they want to be reelected, can’t permit themselves viewpoints that are seen as too extreme. In order to hold power, they have to keep their ideas within the margins of what’s acceptable. This window of acceptability is populated by schemes that are rubber-stamped by the experts, tallied up by statistics services, and have good odds of making it into the law books.
”
”
Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There)
“
But you're absolutely sure we're right?' The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. 'I remember talking with Henry Kissinger,' she continued, 'and he came up and said 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected? You were wrong on Haldeman.' And he seemed upset and said something about it being terribly, terribly unfair.'
If there's anyone who has not been wronged, Woodward said, it is Bob Haldeman. It was the most definite statement Woodward made during lunch.
'Oh, really,' said Mrs. Graham. 'I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was worried.' She paused. 'You've reassured me. You really have.' She looked at Woodward. Her face said, Do better.
-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
”
”
Carl Bernstein (All the President’s Men)
“
In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court declared de jure (by law) racial segregation legal, which caused it to spread in at least twelve northern states. In 1898, Democrats rioted in Wilmington, North Carolina, driving out the mayor and all the other Republican officeholders and killing at least twelve African Americans. The McKinley administration did nothing, allowing this coup d'etat to stand. Congress became desegregated in 1901 when Congressman George H. White of North Carolina failed to win reelection owing to the disfranchisement of black voters in his state. No African American served in Congress again until 1929, and none from the South until 1973.
”
”
James W. Loewen (Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism)
“
Our bodyguard is a born-again Christian with a father complex, a drinking problem, intellectual limitations and not enough backbone to do his military service with honor. In short, a guy we should be pleased is going to be reelected today.
”
”
Jo Nesbø (The Snowman (Harry Hole, #7))
“
To win reelection, Medvedev had to win one vote: Putin’s. To win that vote, Medvedev above all else had to demonstrate his unique abilities to work with Obama to achieve results that were good for Russia. We had just handed the Russian president a defeat at the very moment when Medvedev believed Putin was deciding his fate. It played into the narrative of Medvedev’s critics back home that he was weak and susceptible to being pushed around by the Americans. The momentum for missile-defense
”
”
Michael McFaul (From Cold War To Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia)
“
Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself.
”
”
Gore Vidal (The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000)
“
celebration. Textbook authors present our nation as getting ever better in all areas, from race relations to transportation. The traditional portrayal of Reconstruction as a period of Yankee usurpation and Negro debauchery fits with the upward curve of progress, for if relations were bad in Reconstruction, perhaps not as bad as in slavery but surely worse than what came later, then we can imagine that race relations have gradually been getting better. However, the facts about Reconstruction compel us to acknowledge that in many ways race relations in this country have yet to return to the point reached in, say, 1870. In that year, to take a small but symbolic example, A. T. Morgan, a white state senator from Hinds County, Mississippi, married Carrie Highgate, a black woman from New York, and was reelected.48 Today this probably could not happen, not in Hinds County, Mississippi, or in many counties throughout the United States. Nonetheless, the archetype of progress prompts many white Americans to conclude that black Americans
”
”
James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong)
“
One of the big differences between economics and politics is that politicians are not forced to pay attention to the consequences that will come after the next elections. An elected official, whose policies keep the electorate happy until Election Day, has a good chance of being reelected, even if those policies have disastrous consequences for years to come. There is no 'present value' for making political decision makers today take into account future consequences, when those consequences will come after the elections.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy)
“
These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith:
Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished.
I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single.
He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower.
If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful.
Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little.
As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud.
She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt.
Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went.
“You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!”
He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq.
She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare!
If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD
I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity.
He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay.
Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal.
Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends?
Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad.
The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans.
Silence filled the room like tear gas.
The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time.
Happiness is the best cosmetic,
He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait.
Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang,
Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect.
During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading.
Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over.
His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah.
The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free.
Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus.
The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo.
Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus.
When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy.
Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace.
Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’
Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost.
Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply.
Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris.
America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won.
Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel.
Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious.
So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks.
If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded.
It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither.
In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay.
Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon.
In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans.
With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.
”
”
Brent Reilly
“
In 2012, President Barack Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, who didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. It was the usual bargain for J. Karacehennem and other people of the Loony Left. You supported a person whose policies you agreed with, sort of, but who you felt was too beholden to corporate interests and whose foreign policy made you sick. If you didn’t support this person, the alternative was something even worse. Voting was little more than triage.
”
”
Jarett Kobek (I Hate the Internet)
“
Mr. President: We, women political prisoners of the Soviet Union, congratulate you on your reelection to the spot of President of the USA. We look with hope to your country which is on the road of FREEDOM and respect for HUMAN RIGHTS. We wish you success on this road.
”
”
Ronald Reagan (An American Life: The Autobiography)
“
I had lost all faith when Nixon won the second time
after so much was already known
about what he had done to retain power.
Now it's time for Trump's Accountability Sandwich.
We don't know yet how many layers there will be,
how much meat,
how many fixings.
It better be good.
Not because I want him to suffer,
but because we need him to,
so he can't do it again,
so he can't be re-elected.
And, just as critically,
we need others to see it and feel it,
MAGA fanatics,
reckless Republican politicos,
misguided mis-informed/uninformed self-styled middle-of-the-roaders,
so that there is less risk to the country,
so that those who crave an autocratic state to impose their power
and their values
on us all
know the cost.
”
”
Shellen Lubin
“
Never mind that in 1982 five black candidates from majority-white districts won seats in the North Carolina State House of Representatives. Or that from 1983 to 1995 a majority-white district in Missouri was represented in Congress by Alan Wheat, a black Democrat. Or that between 1991 and 1997 Gary Franks, a black Republican from Connecticut, represented a congressional district that was 88 percent white. Or that in 1996 Sanford Bishop, a black Democrat from Georgia, easily won reelection to Congress in a district that was only 35 percent black. Or that in 2010 Tim Scott of South Carolina and Allen West of Florida, both black Republicans, were elected to Congress from districts that are overwhelmingly white. Or that Representatives Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Keith Ellison of Minnesota are black Democrats who represent districts that are more than 60 percent white.
”
”
Jason L. Riley (Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed)
“
The eight members of Congress on his side are all in safe congressional districts, gerrymandered so cartoonishly that they could probably drop their pants in the middle of the hearing, start sucking their thumbs, and not only would they be reelected in two years, they would also run unopposed.
”
”
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
“
A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us, as now...
...that the names of all the men eligible in each assembly district be put into a hat (or, if no hat can be found that is large enough, into a bathtub), and that a blind moron, preferably of tender years, be delegated to draw out one...
The advantages that this system would offer are so vast and obvious that I hesitate to venture into the banality of rehearsing them. It would in the first place, save the commonwealth the present excessive cost of elections, and make political campaigns unnecessary. It would in the second place, get rid of all the heart-burnings that now flow out of every contest at the polls, and block the reprisals and charges of fraud that now issue from the heart-burnings. It would, in the third place, fill all the State Legislatures with men of a peculiar and unprecedented cast of mind – men actually convinced that public service is a public burden, and not merely a private snap. And it would, in the fourth and most important place, completely dispose of the present degrading knee-bending and trading in votes, for nine-tenths of the legislators, having got into office unwillingly, would be eager only to finish their duties and go home, and even those who acquired a taste for the life would be unable to increase the probability, even by one chance in a million, of their reelection.
The disadvantages of the plan are very few, and most of them, I believe, yield readily to analysis. Do I hear argument that a miscellaneous gang of tin-roofers, delicatessen dealers and retired bookkeepers, chosen by hazard, would lack the vast knowledge of public affairs needed by makers of laws? Then I can only answer (a) that no such knowledge is actually necessary, and (b) that few, if any, of the existing legislators possess it...
Would that be a disservice to the state? Certainly not. On the contrary, it would be a service of the first magnitude, for the worst curse of democracy, as we suffer under it today, is that it makes public office a monopoly of a palpably inferior and ignoble group of men. They have to abase themselves to get it, and they have to keep on abasing themselves in order to hold it. The fact reflects in their general character, which is obviously low. They are men congenitally capable of cringing and dishonorable acts, else they would not have got into public life at all. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule among them, but how many? What I contend is simply that the number of such exceptions is bound to be smaller in the class of professional job-seekers than it is in any other class, or in the population in general. What I contend, second, is that choosing legislators from that populations, by chance, would reduce immensely the proportion of such slimy men in the halls of legislation, and that the effects would be instantly visible in a great improvement in the justice and reasonableness of the laws.
”
”
H.L. Mencken (A Mencken Chrestomathy)
“
How did the American people ever reach this point where they believe that US aggression in the Middle East will make us safe when it does the opposite? How did the American people ever reach the point where they believe that fighting unconstitutional wars is required to protect our freedoms and our Constitution? Why do we allow the NSA, CIA, FBI, TSA, etc. to destroy our liberty at home, as part of the Global War on Terror, with a pretext that they are preserving our liberty? Why are the lying politicians reelected and allowed to bankrupt our country, destroy our money, and enter wars without the proper consent? Why do the American people suffer in silence and not scream “Enough is enough!”? We’ve had enough of the “humanitarian do-gooders” and the proponents of “American exceptionalism” who give us nothing but war, economic suffering, and less freedom. This can and must be stopped.
”
”
Ron Paul (Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity)
“
The Democratic Party would like to be re-elected so that they can continue to uphold almost no Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) whistle-blower complaints, enforce hardly any police internal affairs allegations, and corrupt corporations with lobbyists can continue operating outside of the law.
”
”
Steven Magee
“
Extorting money in the form of campaign contributions is not simply about getting reelected. Many politicians aggressively fund-raise even though they face little or no opposition for reelection. Politicians have discovered a creative way to transfer donations into subsidies designed to benefit their lifestyles
”
”
Peter Schweizer (Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets)
“
The shittrain began on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas - when some twisted little geek blew the President's off... and then a year later, LBJ was re-elected as the "Peace Candidate."
Johnson did a lot of rotten things in those five bloody years, but when the history books are written he will emerge in his proper role as the man who caused an entire generation of Americans to lose all respect for the Presidency, the White House, the Army, and in fact the who structure of "government.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72)
“
People succeed or fail on the merits in America, not on who they
know or whose reelection campaign they supported. This absolutely
American principle must be reestablished and permanently fortified.
There can be no more “too big to fail.” If you are reckless, greedy,
and arrogant, the American taxpayer should not bail you out.
”
”
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
“
The powers that be did whatever it took to prevent Trump from winning his re-election bid in 2020. They admitted as much in a victory lap masquerading as a news article in Time magazine that referred to the individuals and institutions behind the efforts to oust Trump as a “well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”16
”
”
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway (Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections)
“
She was thinking a million things, some of which had plagued her even before she'd found out: What if the state floods; we reelect that terrible man; if I'm bad at it; I do it and then I decide I don't want to do it; if I don't do it and miss it; what if someone shoots me in the grocery store, the movie theater, my own home; what about the revisionist histories taught in schools; what if I'm not self-sacrificing enough; if I'm too self-sacrificing; if me and Liam get divorced, shit happens; what if the kid hates me; if I'm cruel; if I really really love it and lose it; if none of this can be sustained, not our love or our planet? What if, in the end, we just dye the ocean and wish it well? For better or worse, she didn't know if it was responsible to bring new life into this world, but she couldn't spend all her time agonizing. She had to keep moving, keep breathing, or else she'd cease to exist, so she gave Pia the simplest of answers, what it could all boil down to: 'Honestly? What will this baby do to me?
”
”
Dantiel W. Moniz (Milk Blood Heat)
“
Now, twenty years later, Candice Bergen, who played Murphy Brown, admitted Quayle was right – but at the time, Quayle was running for re-election, and so he had to be wrong.
”
”
Ben Shapiro (How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument)
“
Mr. Lincoln is already defeated. He cannot be re-elected.
”
”
Horace Greeley
“
By the 2012 presidential election cycle, their company counted among its clients both the Obama re-election campaign and the campaign of Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
”
”
Brian Christian (Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions)
“
At work, I was still attending all the meetings I always had while also grappling with most of the same responsibilities. The only real difference was that I now made half my original salary and was trying to cram everything into a twenty-hour week. If a meeting ran late, I’d end up tearing home at breakneck speed to fetch Malia so that we could arrive on time (Malia eager and happy, me sweaty and hyperventilating) to the afternoon Wiggleworms class at a music studio on the North Side. To me, it felt like a sanity-warping double bind. I battled guilt when I had to take work calls at home. I battled a different sort of guilt when I sat at my office distracted by the idea that Malia might be allergic to peanuts. Part-time work was meant to give me more freedom, but mostly it left me feeling as if I were only half doing everything, that all the lines in my life had been blurred. Meanwhile, it seemed that Barack had hardly missed a stride. A few months after Malia’s birth, he’d been reelected to a four-year term in the state senate, winning with 89 percent of the vote.
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Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
There was nothing I could possibly say to that, so I turned away, looking out at the traffic, seeing in front of us now a yellow taxicab with a bumper sticker reading Put Christ Back In Christmas. An excellent sentiment, only slightly marred by the fact the lettering was colored red and white and blue, as though Christ were a good American running for reelection. But it’s the thought
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Donald E. Westlake (Brothers Keepers)
“
There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans; I have made that argument myself — with considerable venom, as I recall — over the past ten months…. But only a blind geek or a waterhead could miss the difference between McGovern and Richard Nixon. Granted, they are both white men; and both are politicians—but the similarity ends right there, and from that point on the difference is so vast that anybody who can’t see it deserves whatever happens to them if Nixon gets re-elected due to apathy, stupidity, and laziness on the part of potential McGovern voters.
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Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72)
“
The Eurythmics were back on the charts. Dirty Dancing was at the box office. The Iron curtain was still standing. Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term. There we were, back in 1987.
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Nicola Lagioia (Bringing It All Back Home)
“
IN THE PRESIDENTIAL race of 1968, Richard Nixon defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had stepped forward to run when LBJ shocked the country by declining to seek reelection. Nixon carried thirty-two states and more than three hundred electoral votes. He took his oath of office on January 20, 1969. An hour later, LBJ departed the nation’s capital, where he had been a fixture since his election to Congress in 1937. He left with few friends.
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George W. Bush (41: A Portrait of My Father)
“
Sister Boom Boom—a half-Catholic, half-Jewish drag queen named Jack Fertig, who wore a whore’s makeup and a nun’s habit and vamped it up with the other political pranksters in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—was an especially aggravating thorn in Feinstein’s side. Boom Boom ran a remarkably aggressive campaign against Feinstein during her 1983 reelection bid, under the slogan “Nun of the Above,” eventually winning twenty-three thousand votes.
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David Talbot (Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love)
“
Red couldn’t be less interested. “I wonder what baboon they replaced Little Bo with—they deserve whatever oaf they put on the throne—” She suddenly stopped talking and her eyes grew so large they took up half her face. “Wait one moment; did you just address me as Your Majesty?” Froggy and Conner shared an excited smile. Red’s hands started shaking and she jumped up and down. Had all her dreams come true? Had her people given her back the throne? “Was Red re-elected queen?” Conner asked. “Yes, am I the baboon? Am I the oaf they deserve?” she asked as she anxiously bounced. “No, ma’am,” the third Little Pig said. “I was speaking to Prince Charlie.” Froggy turned a pale shade of green. “Me?” he asked. “I was elected?
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Chris Colfer (A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3))
“
A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws, and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama’s election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger. It
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Jesmyn Ward (The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race)
“
Renowned philosopher and Chicago University professor Martha C. Nussbaum told me in an interview after Modi’s 2012 victory, his third as Gujarat chief minister, that his triumph was a blot on the people of Gujarat who chose to “re-elect an outlaw”.
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Ullekh N.P. (War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 Win)
“
Carter then proceeded to kill any chance he had of securing reelection. In American political discourse, fundamental threats are by definition external. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or international communism could threaten the United States. That very year, Iran’s Islamic revolutionaries had emerged to pose another such threat. That the actions of everyday Americans might pose a comparable threat amounted to rank heresy. Yet Carter now dared to suggest that the real danger to American democracy lay within.
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Andrew J. Bacevich (The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project))
“
After two Republican senators learned that the son of Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming, a Democrat, had been arrested in Lafayette Park, they gave Hunt a choice. He could withdraw from his 1954 reelection campaign or face the publicity of his son’s homosexual arrest. The Senate was virtually tied. If Hunt resigned, he risked shifting power to the Republicans. On the morning of June 19, 1954, Senator Hunt, a straight victim of antigay political blackmail, entered his Capitol office and shot himself with a .22-caliber rifle.
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Eric Cervini (The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America)
“
Oh, there had been divorced Presidents, even, late in the twentieth century, one who had survived a White House divorce to the extent of being re-elected. Of course old Gus Time hadn't made any mistake in the marital department. Sixty years of wedded bliss. The grin came and went. Old fox! They said when he was in his early twenties and so new in Washington he still smacked of the boondocks, he had cast his eyes around all the Washington wives: he picked Senator Black's wife Olive for her beauty, her brains, her organizational genius and her relish of public life, then simply stole her from the Senator. It worked, though she was thirteen years older than he. She was the greatest First Lady the country had ever known. But behind the scenes - Oh man, what a tartar! Not that he had ever heard old Gus complain. The public lion was perfectly content to be a private mouse. Gus do this, Gus don't do that - and he was so lost when she died that he abandoned Washington the moment her funeral was over, went to live in his home state of Iowa and died himself not two months later.
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Colleen McCullough (A Creed for the Third Millennium)
“
Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: “For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone.” A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd.
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Frankie Boyle
“
The answer was, we weren’t at all ready. Annual flu shots didn’t provide protection against H1N1, it turned out, and because vaccines generally weren’t a moneymaker for drug companies, the few U.S. vaccine makers that existed had a limited capacity to ramp up production of a new one. Then we faced questions of how to distribute antiviral medicines, what guidelines hospitals used in treating cases of the flu, and even how we’d handle the possibility of closing schools and imposing quarantines if things got significantly worse. Several veterans of the Ford administration’s 1976 swine flu response team warned us of the difficulties involved in getting out in front of an outbreak without overreacting or triggering a panic: Apparently President Ford, wanting to act decisively in the middle of a reelection campaign, had fast-tracked mandatory vaccinations before the severity of the pandemic had been determined, with the result that more Americans developed a neurological disorder connected to the vaccine than died from the flu. “You need to be involved, Mr. President,” one of Ford’s staffers advised, “but you need to let the experts run the process.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
It's easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thought of a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primary challenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last president who lost reelection without a serious primary challenge, by contrast, was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face a primary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he will lose reelection only slightly higher. No wonder conservatives are fantasizing about Hillary Clinton taking down Barack Obama. If she doesn't, it's unlikely they will.
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Peter Beinart
“
When President Nixon was reelected in a landslide in 1972, film critic Pauline Kael famously said in disbelief, “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”14 Her statement has come to symbolize the insulation of the liberal elite, living in a bubble and hearing only the opinions of fellow liberals. It has become known as “Pauline Kael Syndrome” and its most virulent strain has been discovered in late 2016, complete with paranoid delusions of Russian hacking. Liberals
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Roger Stone (The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution)
“
Picked up by lecher fingers stuck on greedy hands craving more greasy death in whatever form it comes. There's nothing left of me. I am completely burnt to a crisp.
"Uhmm," says the recently re-elected President, looking into the camera, telling it like it is: "these extra-crunchy alien moonbeams sure are finger-lickin' good.
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Mark Amerika (Sexual Blood)
“
social workers today are hardly radicals; few engage in social and political action even of a reformist nature. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed legislation that “end[ed] welfare as we know it,” there was little organized protest from the social work profession. Although the act terminated a 60-year-old entitlement to assistance for low-income children and their caretakers that social workers had helped to create and had defended vigorously for decades, NASW endorsed Clinton for reelection with little reference to the issue. In marked contrast to past generations, the protests of radical social workers received scant attention inside and outside the profession.
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Michael Reisch (The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States)
“
The two men who bring guns to the ghetto watch you sing yourself out of their hands and they not happy at all. Nobody uptown singing thanks and praises for you. Not the man who bring guns to the Eight Lanes, still run by Shotta Sherrif. That man know him party going up for re-election and they need to win, to stay in power, to bring power to the people, all comrades and socialists. Not the Syrian who bring guns to Copenhagen City and who want to win the election so bad that he will move God himself if God in the seat. The American who come with guns know that whoever win Kingston win Jamaica and whoever win West Kingston win Kingston, before any man in the ghetto tell him.
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Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings)
“
The actual consumers of knowledge are the children—who can’t pay, can’t vote, can’t sit on the committees. Their parents care for them, but don’t sit in the classes themselves; they can only hold politicians responsible according to surface images of “tough on education.” Politicians are too busy being re-elected to study all the data themselves; they have to rely on surface images of bureaucrats being busy and commissioning studies—it may not work to help any children, but it works to let politicians appear caring. Bureaucrats don’t expect to use textbooks themselves, so they don’t care if the textbooks are hideous to read, so long as the process by which they are purchased looks good on the surface. The textbook publishers have no motive to produce bad textbooks, but they know that the textbook purchasing committee will be comparing textbooks based on how many different subjects they cover, and that the fourth-grade purchasing committee isn’t coordinated with the third-grade purchasing committee, so they cram as many subjects into one textbook as possible. Teachers won’t get through a fourth of the textbook before the end of the year, and then the next year’s teacher will start over. Teachers might complain, but they aren’t the decision-makers, and ultimately, it’s not their future on the line, which puts sharp bounds on how much effort they’ll spend on unpaid altruism . . .
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Eliezer Yudkowsky (Rationality: From AI to Zombies)
“
Despite an unimpressive first term in office, which featured huge tax cuts
for the wealthiest Americans and tax increases for everyone else, Reagan was
reelected in 1984 in an unprecedented landslide, winning forty-nine of the
fifty states against hapless Democrat Walter Mondale. While he has become
the patron saint of all Republicans, especially those who revel in wearing the
“conservative” mantle, Reagan’s record is far, far removed from his rhetoric.
Despite this, the collective delusion of his supporters is best exemplified by
noted Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan’s claims, regarding his 1980
campaign promises, that they were “Done, done, done, done, done, done and
done. Every bit of it.
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Donald Jeffries (Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics)
“
What is entirely genuine in Kollek, without admixture, is his love for Jerusalem. Not even his detractors deny it. Christians and Arabs may not accept the rule of Israel, but they are satisfied with the Kollek administration. I am told that without Arab votes Kollek would not have been re-elected. People jokingly speak of him as one of the Arab politicians.
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Saul Bellow (To Jerusalem and Back)
“
President Carter’s re-election campaign in 1979 commenced amid spiralling global oil prices. With Bandar’s help, Carter drafted a letter to Fahd requesting Saudi Arabia to put more oil on the market.69 Fahd responded: ‘Tell my friend, the president of the United States of America, when they need our help, they will not be disappointed.’70 He promised to do ‘anything in his power externally or internally to ensure your re-election’, since this was ‘essential if there was ever to be a just and lasting peace in the Middle East’.71 This assistance, which saw Saudi oil trading $4–5 a day below other suppliers, cost the kingdom $30m to $40m a day. In gratitude, Carter invited Bandar to the White House in early December 1979, where they discussed Middle East politics and the US–Saudi relationship.
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Andrew Feinstein (The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade)
“
Settlement (Ephraim Margolin, San Francisco) Such news of an amicable settlement having made this court happier than a tick on a fat dog because it is otherwise busier than a one-legged cat in a sand box and, quite frankly, would have rather jumped naked off of a twelve foot step ladder into a five gallon bucket of porcupines than have presided over a two week trial of the herein dispute, a trial which, no doubt, would have made the jury more confused than a hungry baby in a topless bar and made the parties and their attorneys madder than mosquitoes in a mannequin factory. The clerk shall engage the services of a structural engineer to ascertain if the return of this file to the Clerk’s office will exceed the maximum structural load of the floor of said office. Judge Wins Reelection While Pleading Insanity [Huffington Post, Chicago, Nov.
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Charles M. Sevilla (Law and Disorder: Absurdly Funny Moments from the Courts)
“
Bucky was very clear that he felt there were two major areas of human endeavor that needed this prosperity understanding: politics and big business. Both of these fields are guilty in his mind of doing what is best for their personal goals rather than what is best for the well-being of all. I’m sure he would have acknowledged exceptions to this thought, but in general he felt human progress depended on these two areas changing their views on how to prosper. The welfare of others must become the driving motivation behind their efforts. Can you imagine politicians who always voted according to their inner guidance without any concern about what would get them reelected, or corporations that depended on the value of their product to boost sales without trying to sell people on why they have to buy it? There are many other selfmotivating problems that go with modern politics and big business. In
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Phillip M. Pierson (Metaphysics of Buckminster Fuller: How to Let the Universe Work for You!)
“
In all of this, Adams and Hamilton are not in the forefront. Adams would need Republican votes if he was to be reelected, while Hamilton’s brilliant lawyerly mind had, in two Federalist papers, anticipated the Jefferson-Madison dilemma. From Federalist No. 26: “The State legislatures who will always be not only vigilant but suspicious and jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government, will constantly have their attention awake to the conduct of the national government, and will be ready enough, if anything improper appears, to sound the alarm to the people, and not only to be the voice, but if necessary the ARM of discontent.” It is possible that Jefferson had not read this, but Madison, coauthor of The Federalist, would have known it well and could easily have deeply embarrassed the aborning Bonaparte. But Hamilton was not brought into the matter.
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Gore Vidal (Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson)
“
Right off, Hopkins addressed a matter that had pinched relations between America and Britain. “I told him there was a feeling in some quarters that he, Churchill, did not like America, Americans or Roosevelt,” Hopkins recalled. Churchill denied it, emphatically, and blamed Joseph Kennedy for promulgating so incorrect an impression. He directed a secretary to retrieve the telegram he had sent to Roosevelt the previous fall, in which he congratulated the president on his reelection—the one Roosevelt had never answered or acknowledged. This initial awkwardness was quickly eclipsed, as Hopkins explained that his mission was to learn all he could about Britain’s situation and needs. The conversation ranged wide, from poison gas, to Greece, to North Africa. John Colville noted in his diary that Churchill and Hopkins “were so impressed with each other that their tête-à-tête did not break up till nearly 4:00.” It
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
We can’t even expect our immigration officials not to make citizens of convicted felons.1 Tens of thousands of immigrants have been granted citizenship after being convicted of crimes in the United States. And, no, you can’t see their names or read about their crimes. A year before the 1996 presidential election, the Clinton White House worked feverishly to naturalize 1 million immigrants in time for Clinton’s reelection. Criminal background checks were jettisoned for 200,000 applicants, so that citizenship was granted to at least 70,000 people with FBI criminal records and 10,000 with felony records.2 Murderers, robbers, and rapists were all made our fellow Americans so the Democrats would have a million new voters by the 1996 election. In 2013 alone, the Obama administration released 36,007 convicted criminal aliens with about 88,000 convictions among them—including 426 for rape and 193 for murder.3 They’ll soon be your fellow citizens, too.
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Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
“
Trump is a complete package of the Founders’ greatest fears—delusions of royalty, appeals to the basest appetites of the polity, populism over small-r republicanism, and vulnerability to the blandishments of foreign powers who so obviously are welcome to corrupt him with gifts or flattery of his ravenous ego.
To date, his actions have had the possible check of the 2020 election hanging over him, which has influenced him whether or not he admits it. Trump needs to win reelection to continue his nation-state level, god-tier grifting and to avoid prosecution.
He thrives not on a competition of ideas but on the division of the country. Our parties and politics will follow him down, fighting a dirtier, more savage battle until we’ve forgotten what it means to share even the most common baseline with our fellow Americans. The cold civil war is warming by the day. He’s not the only centrifugal political force, but he’s the most powerful.
This will only accelerate if he is reelected. There will be no end to his ambition and no check on his actions. He will conclude that he’s the winner who wins, and for him that will justify everything in his catalog of errors and terrors. We’ve learned there is no bottom with Trump, no level to which he won’t sink, no excess he won’t embrace.
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Rick Wilson (Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump — And Democrats from Themselves)
“
Now Justin stood in our reading room, leaning up against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was tall, with a wiry athletic build. Usually, he was Mr. Ultra-Casual, with sun-kissed blond hair that he kept out of his eyes by pushing his sunglasses up on his forehead. Today, that messy blond hair was clean-cut, and he’d traded his typical board shorts and loose T-shirt for a striped shirt and khakis. His father, the mayor of Eastport, was running for re-election. Since the campaign started last month, Justin had become the mayor’s sixteen-year-old sidekick. I’d heard he was spending the summer working for his dad down at the town hall, which would explain the nice clothes. What sucked for me was that the new style fit him. He looked even better, the jerk.
“I heard you and Tiffany got into a catfight over me at Yummy’s,” Justin announced with an overconfident grin that pissed me off.
I slammed the door behind me. “First off, I dumped a soda over her head. That was it.”
“Damn, a catfight sounded much hotter. I was picturing ripped shirts, exposed skin.”
I rolled my eyes. “And second, it wasn’t over you, egomaniac. You can date every girl in town as far as I’m concerned. I hate you. I pray every night that you’ll fall victim to some strange and unusual castration accident.” I pointed to the door. “So get the hell out.”
His lips twitched, fighting a smile.
Ugh. I was going for “crazy ex filled with hate” not “isn’t she cute when she’s mad?”
“Feel better after getting all that out?
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Kim Harrington (Clarity (Clarity, #1))
“
The West simply had to understand that Bolshevism is an enemy for all mankind. But the West did not understand at all. The democratic West simply could not understand: What do you mean when you call yourselves a political opposition? An opposition exists inside your country? Why has it never publicly declared its existence? If you are dissatisfied with Stalin, go back home and, in the first subsequent election, do not re-elect him. That would be the honest course. But why did you have to take up arms, and, what is worse, German arms? No, we have to extradite you; it would be terribly bad form to act otherwise, and we might spoil our relations with a gallant ally. In World War II the West kept defending its own freedom and defended it for itself. As for us and as for Eastern Europe, it buried us in an even more absolute and hopeless slavery.
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Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII)
“
No doubt Mr Grimes was personally an advocate for the return of Mr Vavasor, and would do all in his power to prevent the re-election of the young Lord Kilfenora, whose father, the Marquis of Bunratty, had scattered that six thousand pounds among the electors and non-electors of Chelsea; but his main object was that money should be spent. “‘Tain’t altogether for myself,” he said to a confidential friend in the same way of business; “I don’t get so much on it. Perhaps sometimes not none. May be I’ve a bill agin some of those gents not paid this werry moment. But it’s the game I looks to. If the game dies away, it’ll never be got up again; — never. Who’ll care about elections then? Anybody’d go and get hisself elected if we was to let the game go by!” And so, that the game might not go by, Mr Grimes was now present in Mr George Vavasor’s rooms.
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Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
“
After years of fighting, the war was a complete stalemate and would have ended almost immediately in a negotiated settlement (as had most other European conflicts) had not the U.S. declared war on Germany. As soon as Wilson's re-election had been engineered through the "he kept us out of war" slogan, a complete reversal of propaganda was instituted. In those days before radio and television, public opinion was controlled almost exclusively by newspapers. Many of the major newspapers were controlled by the Federal Reserve crowd. Now they began beating the drums over the "inevitability of war." Arthur Ponsonby, a memebr of the British parliament, admitted in his book Falsehood In War Time (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1928): "There must have been more deliberate lying in the world from 1914 to 1918 than in any other period of the world's history." Propaganda concerning the war was heavily one-sided. Although after the war many historians admitted that one side was as guilty as the other in starting the war, Germany was pictured as a militaristic monster which wanted to rule the world. Remember, this picture was painted by Britain which had its soldiers in more countries around the world than all other nations put together. So-called "Prussian militarism" did exist, but it was no threat to conquer the world. Meanwhile, the sun never set on the British Empire! Actually, the Germans were proving to be tough business competitors in the world's markets and the British did not approve.
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Gary Allen (None Dare Call It Conspiracy)
“
On the evening of Wednesday, June 22, 1955, there was an official re-election ceremony being held on the open porch behind the Executive Mansion. As usual it was hot and steamy in Monrovia and without air-conditioning the country’s President and several members of his administration were taking in the cooler, but still damp, night air. Without warning, several shots were fired in the direction of the President. In the dark all that could be seen were the bright flashes from a pistol. Two men, William Hutchins, a guard, and Daniel Derrick, a member of the national legislature, fell wounded, but fortunately President Tubman had escaped harm and was hurried back into the building. In the dark no one was certain, but Paul Dunbar was apparently seen by someone in the garden behind the mansion.
James Bestman, a presidential security agent, subdued and apprehended the alleged shooter in the Executive Pavilion, best known for its concrete painted animals. It was said that Bestman had used his .38 caliber “Smith and Wesson,” revolver.
Members of the opposition party were accused of participating in the assassination plot and a dragnet was immediately cast to round up the alleged perpetrators. It didn’t take long before the son of former President William Coleman, Samuel David Coleman, was indicted, as was his son John. The following day, warrants for the arrest of Former President Barclay, and others in opposition to Tubman, were also issued for allegedly being accomplices. Coleman and his son fled to Clay-Ashland, a township 15 miles north of Monrovia in the St. Paul River District of Montserrado County.
Photo Caption: The (former) Liberian Executive Mansion.
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Hank Bracker
“
MH: In an early letter to William Kennedy you spoke of the "dry rot" of American journalism. Tell me what you think. What's the state of the American press currently?
HST: The press today is like the rest of the country. Maybe you need a war. Wars tend to bring out out the best in them. War was everywhere you looked in the sixties, extending into the seventies. Now there are no wars to fight. You know, it's the old argument about why doesn't the press report the good news? Well, now the press is reporting the good news, and it's not as much fun.
The press has been taken in by Clinton. And by the amalgamation of politics. Nobody denies that the parties are more alike than they are different. No, the press has failed, failed utterly -- they've turned into slovenly rotters. Particularly The New York Times, which has come to be a bastion of political correctness. I think my place in history as defined by the PC people would be pretty radically wrong. Maybe I could be set up as a target at the other end of the spectrum. I feel more out of place now than I did under Nixon. Yeah, that's weird. There's something going on here, Mr. Jones, and you don't know what it is, do you?
Yeah, Clinton has been a much more successfully deviant president than Nixon was. You can bet if the stock market fell to 4,000 and if four million people lost their jobs there'd be a lot of hell to pay, but so what? He's already re-elected. Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate. Or maybe he did, at the end of his life. He got very bitter about the press. And what is it he said? "I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just"? That's a guy who's seen the darker side. Yeah, we've become a nation of swine. - HST - The Atlantic , August 26, 1997
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Hunter S. Thompson
“
3 INCIDENT IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL Not long afterwards, a Belgian ferry, the Oudenbourg, was steaming its way from Ostende to Ramsgate. In the straits of Dover the duty officer noticed that half a mile south of its usual course there was something going on in the water. He could not be sure that there was no-one drowning there and so he ordered a change of course down to where the perturbance was taking place. Two hundred passengers on the windward side of the ship were shown a very strange spectacle: in some places a vertical jet of water shot out from the surface, and in some of those vertical jets there could be seen something like a black body thrown up with it; the surface of the sea for one or two hundred yards all around was tossing and seething wildly while, from the depths, a loud rattling and humming could be heard. "It was as if there was a small volcano erupting under the sea." As the Oudenbourg slowly approached the place an enormous wave rose about ten yards ahead of it and a terrible noise thundered out like an explosion. The entire ship was lifted violently and the deck was showered with a rain of water that was nearly boiling hot; and landing on the deck with the water was a strong black body which writhed and let out a sharp loud scream; it was a newt that had been injured and burnt. The captain ordered the ship full steam astern so that the ship would not steam straight into the middle of this turbulent Hell; but the water all around had also begun to erupt and the surface of the sea was strewn with pieces of dismembered newts. The ship was finally able to turn around and it fled northwards as fast as possible. Then there was a terrible explosion about six hundred yards to the stern and a gigantic column of water and steam, perhaps a hundred yards high, shot out of the sea. The Oudenbourg set course for Harwich and sent out a radio warning in all directions: "Attention all shipping, attention all shipping! Severe danger on Ostende-Ramsgate lane. Underwater explosion. Cause unknown. All shipping advised avoid area!" All this time the sea was thundering and boiling, almost as if military manoeuvres had been taking place under the water; but apart from the erupting water and steam there was nothing to see. From both Dover and Calais, destroyers and torpedo boats set out at full steam and squadrons of military aircraft flew to the site of the disturbance; but by the time they got there all they found was that the surface was discoloured with something like a yellow mud and covered with startled fish and newts that had been torn to pieces. At first it was thought that a mine in the channel must have exploded; but once the shores on both sides of the Straits of Dover had been ringed off with a chain of soldiers and the English prime-minister had, for the fourth time in the history of the world, interrupted his Saturday evening and hurried back to London, there were those who thought the incident must be of extremely serious international importance. The papers carried some highly alarming rumours, but, oddly enough, this time remained far from the truth; nobody had any idea that Europe, and the whole world with it, stood for a few days on the brink of a major war. It was only several years later that a member of the then British cabinet, Sir Thomas Mulberry, failed to be re-elected in a general election and published his memoirs setting out just what had actually happened; but by then, though, nobody was interested.
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Karel Čapek (War with the Newts)