“Hang the loudest of your critics from the steeple.
Murder them or elsewhere they will huddle.
And here’s my advice for dealing with the people:
Keep them ignorant and they’ll cause you no trouble.
Once you’ve taught them how to use the potty,
you can burn the books and slay the literati.”
Dear reader, don’t imagine we’re so far away
from a state of things in which jerks hold sway
over the credulity of the dupe in charge.
If anything, now we have the means to enlarge
upon the tyrannies of yesterday.
Learn from the history of the Middle Kingdom.
Each time the rifles were placed in the hands of youths,
they’d gather up the ancient, living truths,
make effigies, corpses of them, burn them, fling them.
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