We all remember who Voltaire was, right? I mean, I didn’t know him personally, but people are saying he wrote some pretty cool stuff. Some of it feels pretty prescient right now. Like, for example, this gem from his “Questions sur les miracles” (1765):
“Il y a eu des gens qui ont dit autrefois : Vous croyez des choses incompréhensibles, contradictoires, impossibles, parce que nous vous l’avons ordonné ; faites donc des choses injustes parce que nous vous l’ordonnons. Ces genslà raisonnaient à merveille. Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste. Si vous n’opposez point aux ordres de croire l’impossible l’intelligence que Dieu a mise dans votre esprit, vous ne devez point opposer aux ordres de malfaire la justice que Dieu a mise dans votre coeur. Une faculté de votre âme étant une fois tyrannisée, toutes les autres facultés doivent l’être également.”
Quite a rouser, eh?
Yeah, OK, my French isn’t quite at that level either. Here’s a translation:
"Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well.”
The relevance should be obvious “en ce moment” but just in case you need to be reminded, here’s Snopes doing a straight-faced fact check on something that any sane person would know was bollocks from the get-go.
Yes, that’s right: the GOP is now claiming that “Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, are eating people's pet cats or their parks' waterfowl.” And the members of the Death Cult are buying it because (I bleep you not), “I saw it in a video on X” (verbatim quote from someone I blocked on Facebook earlier today).
Which brings us, of course, to this scene from the 1949 Three Stooges short “Malice in the Palace”:
“Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.” If you are willing to believe a bit from an old Three Stooges short is reality, what else are you willing to believe? And what can you be convinced to do? Aside from, you know, attempt to overthrow the government?
What would Voltaire have said? Something pithy, no doubt.