I just read (maybe reread) H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon. I sometimes think that in a previous life I must have lived either either Great Britain or Russia during the 1800s. For some reason that literature talks to me. Anyhoo…
The narrator, the companion of the scientist protagonist of Well’s novel, finding themselves in a pickle on the moon, delivers the following commentary:
“It’s this accursed science,” I cried. “It’s the very Devil. The mediæval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!”
As I read that it dawned on me that the Republican Party must have lifted that line verbatim to put into their party’s platform.
Just in case inquiring minds wanted to know.
Keep well.
‘“Manhood versus Machinery” occurred to him as a suitable headline. Journalism curdles all one’s mind to phrases.’ H.G. Wells in The Land of Ironclads