I have a dislike for most political memes that are so popularly posted on Facebook and other social media. So many are crude, misleading, poorly written and contain doctored and photoshopped images and pictures. These memes are not meant to inform but inflame, frighten and mislead. What’s worse is that these memes are shared and spread like a cancer. An example of such a meme is described below:
If bullshit doesn’t come to a halt, you will see 83 million gun owners walk out of their homes like this. (picture of masked man carying a rifle and dressed in fatigues).
I am a collector of timeless aphorisms. Aphorisms are short, pithy observations, opinions and thoughts created by (mostly) wise and observant people, not by bots and trolls in their cellars.
Here are a few aphorisms that may have been written a century ago are relevant to what we experience today…
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
“Holders of power, almost inevitably desire their subjects to be emotional rather than rational, since this renders it easier to make those who are victims of an unjust social system contented with their lot.”
Bertrand Russell
“America is a pot that’s melting.”
John Alejandro King
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”
Dante Alighieri
“A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.”
Bertrand de Jouvenel
“We don’t collect news to inform us. We collect news to affirm us.”
Frank Luntz
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
H.L. Mencken
“A politician thinks about the upcoming elections, a statesman to the next generations.”
James Freeman Clarke
“The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.”
Laurence J. Peter
“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.”
Oscar Ameringer
“The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.”
H.L. Mencken
“The flag does not identify the nation, it identifies the wind.”
George Murray
Esot-eric 
Hi Eric, I am always enlightened by your observations on current events and how the past has a way of repeating constant turmoil and chaos. Anyway, maybe we’ll be lucky down the road.
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