The Burden of Defending Society

Conway, Simon.  (2010).  A Loyal Spy.  London:  Hodder & Stoughton.

A fictional framework for geopolitical commentary on the 21st-century military-industrial complex:   capitalism requires privatization, corporations require profit rather than loyalty.  And if profits can be increased through belief in apocryphal mythology and the duty of true believers to nurture the conditions of a prophesied apocalypse, so much the better.  

"They've convinced themselves that they're on the side of the angels and everybody else is a fool."

"Even as we speak, the day-to-day burden of defending society against the threat of conflict is being transferred to the private sector."

"The day-to-day burden of defending society is now too big for the state to handle alone."

"Life has become more controversial; controvery is more violent; the unintelligent are perverting science into a new form of superstition.  For science read security and they could be talking about the present day."

"We have to terrify them to make them agree to what is necessary for the protection of their freedoms."

"We're going to get rich beyond our wildest dreams....The government doesn't have enough resources of their own to cope.  They're going to need our help.... We're going to provide the protection necessary to get the infrastructure of society up and running again....We'll be heroes."

Very little in the way of explanations for how we arrived at this point, other than utter stupidity and distraction, or alternatives.

"He had come to the conclusion that intelligence was an attribute of individuals and that groups--clans, tribes, nations--were intelligent in inverse proportion to their size and influence:  the bigger the stupider, the stronger the dumber."

"If she had not been so headstrong as a child, so heedless of the consequences of her actions, she might have achieved some semblance of contentment."

"We must not let terrifying threats cause us to degrade what is valuable in our society."

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