Quotessence
Home / Books / Catawampusland

Catawampusland

Book by Dan Johnson · 10 quotes · America, American Culture, America Quotes

Filter quotes by topic

Catawampusland Quotes

“You cling to culture like an orphan drags her rag doll from foster home to foster home. It is your last soiled reminder of what you think you were. You'd rather die at the stake than adapt or evolve because change is scary. So you guard the same tired shit as if it's a precious, sacrosanct relic from the holy crusades of your ancestors when, in fact, it is a withered turn wrapped in butcher paper.”

“We can't fix society until we fix the schools. We can't fix the schools until we fix the neighborhoods. We can't fix the neighborhoods until we fix the economy. We can't fix the economy until we fix politics. We can't fix politics until we fix the pernicious effect of basic human insecurities. We can't fix the pernicious effect of basic human insecurities until we fix society. We can't fix society until we fix the schools.”

“The American people have a nasty habit of waiting until it's far too late to start giving a shit. By and large, your average eligible voter tunes in to politics once every two or four years because they have been scared, shocked, bullied, cajoled, stimulated, seduced, suckered, or outright fear fucked by one or more extremities of the hideous mutant that is our electoral process.”

“The carnival is in full swing around us. Unspeakable depravities are occurring in the shadows behind the tent. Sinister cabals of dark wizards make blood pacts with the mutants on stage. The paranoid hear voices rich with ominous foreboding. Somewhere, someone is getting raped and it may as well be all of us. We're trying to rationalize our way out of a situation where we've been made to believe a moral stand is all that separates us from destruction. But we're fundamentally immoral people. Our morality can be summed up as such: 'I have to get mine.”

“That word again. 'Freedom.' It is the golden tuning fork wielded by pied pipers and charlatans alike to realign a vast demographic of people who fundamentally crave simplicity. Since the birth of the steam engine and the rapid march of industrialism, a ceaseless parade of phony advocacy has tried to wield the hate and frustration of an American underclass that has been zapped and eroded time and time again by future shock. The playbook is simple: play off of differences, vilify anyone who can be made to appear as other, stress moral purity, canonize simplicity, decry any sort of establishment within convenient hating distance, code power with subtle signs of sex, and convert a foundation of fear to its stronger, more virile corollary--military power. When in doubt, capitalize on deeply ambiguous ideological symbols such as 'freedom,' re-appropriate historical moments as examples of conservative triumph, and constantly wave the red, white, and blue.”

“Donald Trump is magnificently terrifying to reasonable Americans because his popularity, win or lose, illuminates a massive stratum of voting, gun-toting Americans who want desperately to be told that their binary values are valid. They want someone to enunciate for them what they know in their heart of hearts: that they and their prejudices and their lust for violence and their stalwart refusal to take part in a complex world of political moving parts puts them in league with the men who waited for the British, guns in hand at Concord Bridge.”

“It must be nice to sit back in your study and look at your Thomas Jefferson biographies and think to yourself, 'thank God we're finally killing this big government leviathan" without having to reconcile the fact that the kill off isn't elevating you, the common man, to new autonomy. It's facilitating the enshrinement of extremely wealthy jerk off ideologues who see the world as something to be sold off to the highest bidder. Big gub'ment in the hands of presumptuous elites? No thanks. The world turned into a regulation free marketplace with no avenue for recourse against the profit-at-any-cost set? Double no thanks.”

“Don't assume your elected officials have your best interest in mind. Read the entire book before you see the movie. Stop Instagramming your goddam twenty-dollar quinoa salad. Don't buy that new pair of pants. Go on a hike instead of watching the game. Don't get your history from the Walt Disney Company. Seek authenticity at whatever cost. Take difficult journeys of body and mind for no reason other than proving to yourself that they are possible. Double check the facts you take for granted. Form your own well-researched opinions. Take great pains not to add any more heartache to the world. Strive to see the impact of your actions as they echo in the universe beyond.”