ble-mindedness, played on
their neuroses, concocted errors for them to fight and, in general,
rigged things in any possible way so that they'd quit, or get fired,
or lose elections, or get arrested, or just generally get put out of
circulation somehow._

_It's extremely effective--and it works very well._

_Sometimes, you've only had to put the blocks to individuals.
Sometimes whole nations have had to go. And sometimes it's been
in-between, and you've managed to foul up whole organizations with
misplaced papers missent messages, error, and changed minds and
everything else you can think of._

_As a matter of fact, it sounds like fun._

"Well," he imagined Lou saying, "it is fun, in away. But it's a deadly
serious business, too."

_Sure it is,_ Malone thought. _I think the first time that came home
to me was when I saw what was happening in Russia, and compared it to
what had been going on over here. Tom Boyd saw that, too, when I
pointed it out to him--as you probably know if you were spying on my
mind at the time._

_Not that I mind that in the least._

_Come more often, by all means._

_But Tom, in case you weren't listening, said: "Over here there are a
lot of confused jerks and idiots... And in Russia there's a lot of
confusion."_

_Now, that's perfectly true, and it spells out the difference. Over
here, you've been confusing the jerks and the idiots, getting rid of
them so the system can work properly. Over in Russia, on the other
hand, you've left the jerks and the idiots all alone to do their dirty
work, and you've just added to the confusion where necessary, so that
the system will break down of its own weight._

"But, after all," Lou said, "things look pretty bad over here, too.
Look at the papers."

_Everybody,_ Malone thought, _has been telling me to go and look at
the newspapers. And when I do look at them I find all sorts of
evidence of confusion. Teachers resigning, senators and
representatives goofing up bills on Congress, gang wars cluttering up
the streets with cadavers and making things tough for the Sanitation
Department, factional fights in various organizations. Now, all of
that looks pretty horrible in the papers, but do you know something?
It isn't horrible at all._

_It's pretty damn good, as a matter of fact._

_The teachers who are resigning, for instance, are the nincompoops
who've got to be pruned out so that competent teachers can come in.
And, with the higher salaries, m