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.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with A.R. Moxon

A.R. Moxon Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @JuliusGoat

Feb 21
Gay kids will die because of this, which is the desired purpose of the bill.
To those who scold that we mustn’t assume evil intentions into the actions of people who consistently pursue absolute evil with steadfast dedication and unshakable resolve: yes, we should.
I guess the ultimate answer to "you don't know what their true motivations are" is "who gives a shit what their motivations are?"

I care *that* you want to burn down my house. I only care *why* you want to burn down my house to the extent it helps me stop you.
Read 18 tweets
Feb 20
Father: *strangles my brother*
Me: help help my father is murdering my brother
Centrist Cousin: it’s that sort of us vs them thinking that’s tearing this family apart
Me: no look literally he’s murdering my brother right in front of us

Centrist Cousin: he’s never going to want to stop if you keep vilifying him with overheated black and white language; I’ve engaged many stranglers and learned a lot about the complexities

Brother: gkkk gkk gk
Me: Look he’s about to die, for real; I really think we just need to stop my dad from killing him right now

Centrist Cousin: that’s exactly the sort of judgemental escalating bad thinking on our side that we need to criticize, I refuse to let myself become just as bad as he is
Read 4 tweets
Feb 19
If you want to live in a modern enlightened society and you vote for Republicans, no you don't.
To be clear, that's any Republicans at any level for any position at any time, and honestly we may want to expand that to include Democrats willing to work with Republicans.

Shut the whole party down, out, and over.
If you want to live in a modern enlightened society and you vote for Republicans, no you don't.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 14
As a Wordle pro on the tour, I feel I should share the best starting word, which all the pros know. The word is XYLYL.
(My own personal favorite starting word is COCCYX, but if I show amateurs how to guess 6-letter words I will be banned from the Wordle Pro Tour and forced to sit next to Bret Stephens in the NYT cafeteria.)
Wordle is a game of constantly shifting strategy; I recommend you get the latest version of my strategy compendium, v14.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 13
I want to propose a different way of thinking about conservatism and progressivism.

I suggest we think about the two positions not as detectable ideologies themselves, but as situational orientations around an existing order.

getrevue.co/profile/julius…
Specifically with this order. The one that exists. This reality. The way our systems and laws are set up, the way they’re codified and the way they’re operationalized. What they claim to intend to do, and what they actually do.

“The way things are,” in other words.
Let’s think of conservatism as being, in its essence, an orientation that desires to keep the existing order just as it is, or to make slow and deliberate calculated minor adjustments, to the existing order.
Read 29 tweets
Feb 8
In BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, Mickey Rooney played I. Y. Yunioshi, dressed up in buck teeth and a cartoon squint, a grotesque caricature of a Japanese person.

So I suppose in that sense “you wouldn’t be able” to make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today.

Which seems somehow preferable.
Now: what interests me is what it means to say *you can’t* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S these days.

It doesn’t mean you CAN’T. Unlike teaching, say,The Bluest Eye to Texas schoolchildren, there exist no laws to prevent Will Ferrell from putting in the teeth and playing Yunioshi.
So actually you *can* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today, I.Y. Yunioshi and all, and throw in Long Duc Dong if you want.

You can if you want wear blackface and dance around in white gloves, like Fred Astaire in SWING TIME, if you want to.

If you want to.
Read 20 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(