Belief means not wanting to know what is true

That nations have a central persecutory task is a widely denied truth. That nations are neccessary for more rational enterprises than war and brutal domination of others is a wholly unproven assumption. In truth, most members of most nations participate in one way or another in the torture and killing of others and in economic and political domination. We only deny it by colluding in such delusions as that leaders are to blame, that suffering is deserved, that punishment reforms, that killing is moral, that some people are not human, that sacrifice brings renewal and that violence is liberating. Indeed, most of what is in history books is stark, raving mad. The maddest of all being the historian's belief that it is sane.
-Lloyd deMause

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