Thread by @JuliusGoat

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and costs for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

What had you got?

I'll tell you:

You had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you,

and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

Let me set up before your thoughts, good friends,

On supposition; which if you will mark,

You shall perceive how horrible a shape

Your innovation bears.

O, desperate as you are,

Wash your foul minds with tears,

And your unreverent knees,

Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven

You'll put down strangers

kill them

cut their throats

And lead the majesty of law in line,

To slip in like a hound.

Say now the king

(as he is clement, if th' offender mourn)

Should so much come to short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whether would you go?

Why, *you* must needs be strangers.

Would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs,

and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you

What would you think

To be thus used?

This is the strangers’ case;

And this

your mountainish

inhumanity.

____________

"The Stranger's Case," William Shakespeare

Sir Thomas Moore: Act II Scene 4

"What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust."

-Evan Osnos @eosnos

@eosnos And here is the magnificent @IanMcKellen, bringing the words found in this thread to gorgeous tragic life.