“’Yes,’ he said, ‘intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. Us, the children…I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.” the Xenogenesis series (Lilith’s brood) Dawn

Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.”

“His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. “Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of ‘wrong’ ideas.” “Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn’t say them, couldn’t sort out my feelings about them, couldn’t keep them bottled inside me.” “As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble.” That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.” kindred Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. “…that guy who wants to be President, that Jarret, he would call you all heathens or pagans or something He does seem to enjoy calling people things like that. There was never such a time in this country…” He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshiped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stopping anyone who was different. The current state of the country does not suit him. “Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, ‘simpler’ time. “How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?” Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.” He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. And there may be even nastier things in that package. The thing is, you can’t separate Jarret from the ‘religious nonsense.’ You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. “We have, it seems, a few people who think Jarret may be just what the country needs-apart from his religious nonsense. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.

We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”

Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler