PLUMBING THE SOUL

[dukealien]

At some point, someone should mention Shelley's 

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world

and the essay it concludes.

Politics is about the management of (societal) force and violence; war is a continuation of politics with an admixture of means (Clausewitz).  But the control mechanism of politics, even in a monarchy, is rhetoric... and since even the most peremptory order or irresistible sentiment must be conceived before expressed, like it or not (and they don't) all political power flows from the mouth of... poets (of which Mao was one).

But lest we forget, Shelley died because his boat didn't float.  Violence is only one small aspect of engineering.