“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire said it centuries ago, but it still holds true today. There’s a group of authoritarians in our country who are doing everything they can to make you afraid of things that almost certainly will not harm you, like terrorist bombs. They trust that you won’t put the numerator of 3,000 over the denominator of 300,000,000 and see that the attacks of September 11, 2001 only killed 0.001 percent, or one in every hundred thousand Americans. Even if you encounter that number, the authoritarians hope that you will disregard it in the face of the persistent and absurd claims that terrorists are everywhere, they are out to get you, and they will, unless… . The word “unless” is always followed by something that you’d never agree to unless you first were tricked into believing the absurdity peddled by the authoritarians.

Here’s an example: “1. Well, if there were a ticking atomic bomb, and someone in custody knew exactly where it was and how to stop it, and there were only two hours left to find it, you’d torture, wouldn’t you? 2. So come on, let us torture people even when there’s no ticking atomic bomb, and we don’t have enough proof to convict the people we’ve detained in a court of law, much less proof that they know where the nonexistent atomic bomb is.” The example is real, although of course point #2 is never expressed in those terms. It never has to be. As long as the authoritarians get you to freak out with step #1, they’ll be able to wave their hands and get you to express implicit consent for them to carry out unstated atrocities. It’s all very comfortingly indirect, isn’t it? But for the targets of these atrocities, the experience is no less brutal.

Stop this process in yourself. Stop believing the absurdities of the authoritarians. Stop this process for our nation. Remove the authoritarians from power.