Politics & Power

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

“Everyone is familiar with the slogan ‘The personal is political’ — not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We oftentimes do the work of the state in and through our interior lives.”

“The job of the newspaper is to afflict the comforted and comfort the afflicted.”

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

“You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Withdrawing from it does not make it go away.”

“In liberal democracies, the border has a unique power to transmute ordinary needs into criminal desires.”

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them.”

“The idea that some of us can simply opt out of politics — the idea that politics is something one chooses…rather than something we have whether we choose it or not…is a fantasy of epic proportions. This kind of nonpolitical storytelling — and the stunted readership it demands — asks us to uphold the lie that certain bodies, certain characters, certain stories, remain depoliticized, neutral, and universal.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”

“Simplicity rarely loses to complexity in battles in the public square.”