awing boundaries along lines of ideology,
the possibility loomed of their coming together again not with
overtures of peace and understanding, but on the battlefield.

AND FINALLY, THE WATCHERS ON THE MARGINS.

7) B-K3

The two major superpowers, still militarily head and shoulders above
the rest, hardly added to the stability of the situation.

The politics of the United Commonwealth, formerly the United States of
America, remained the politics of a child. The 'new Americans'
continued to claim God, family, and self-righteous free enterprise (to
their Republicans a god in itself) as the sole and irreproachable
motive for all their actions. Thus everything they did in the realm
of foreign affairs, usually only half understanding it themselves, must
(in their eyes) inevitably be right, and for the good of all who
followed the true path of capitalism and democracy---in that order.

Soviet Space, meanwhile, had become equally intransigent. The Soviets,
in their turn, hailed as their banner the liberation, equality, and
self-rule of the working classes. These, so the Party line claimed,
had built civilization, but been denied the fruits of their achievement
by the corrupt upper classes, who, like Narcissus, were blind and
self-serving, inherently evil and doomed to fail, but not before
sucking the blood of true humanity and preventing the dreams of Marx
and Trotsky..... And so on, disturbingly similar to the old communist
propaganda. And of course they made no mention of Stalin, the purges,
and the brutal repression of the KGB.

B-N2

That these two irreconcilably opposed powers, directly or indirectly,
held the lives of countless millions in their hands (whether through
action or non-action) was disheartening, but not at all atypical.
Contending governments and heads of state had managed to keep their
peoples at odds, away from any sense of shared humanity and mutual
need, from the beginning of history. In this sense at least, those who
knew something of the nature of war could prepare themselves, if only
for the worst.

"For as you lean," spoke the prophet, "so shall you fall."

8) Q-Q2

The United Commonwealth, under its present leadership, could best be
compared to a wealthy adolescent, raised with the notion that the world
owed it something, angry and sulking because the expected happiness had
not yet been delivered.

It seemed that every time the Commonwealth's economy threatened to
bring it