"However, there is satisfaction in examining what they get out of all
this torment, what advantage they derive from all the trouble of their
wretched existence. Actually the people never blame the tyrant for the
evils they suffer, but they do place responsibility on those who
influence him; peoples, nations, all compete with one another, even the
peasants, even the tillers of the soil, in mentioning the names of the
favorites, in analyzing their vices, and heaping upon them a thousand
insults, a thousand obscenities, a thousand maledictions. All their
prayers, all their vows are directed against these persons; they hold
them accountable for all their misfortunes, their pestilences, their
famines; and if at times they show them outward respect, at those very
moments they are fuming in their hearts and hold them in greater horror
than wild beasts. This is the glory and honor heaped upon influential
favorites for their services by people who, if they could tear apart
their living bodies, would still clamor for more, only half satiated by
the agony they might behold. For even when the favorites are dead those
who live after are never too lazy to blacken the names of these
people-eaters with the ink of a thousand pens, tear their reputations
into bits in a thousand books, and drag, so to speak, their bones past
posterity, forever punishing them after their death for their wicked
lives."
~ Étienne de La Boétie
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