s standard of living closer to the rest of humanity, angry,
illusioned people came forward, organized, made aggressive, patriotic
noises, and persuaded the middle class (the real power in the
electorate) to abandon the floundering liberals and elect a
conservative, Republican President. Then, before hard-line
conservative dogmas could be re-exposed for what they were---a pleasant
excuse for big business to run wild---the ax was put to social
programs, health and environmental concerns were put on the shelf, and
'survival of the fittest' became the unspoken ethic. Large stores of
weapons were amassed (with the money saved by being less sensitive),
some kept, others shipped throughout the galaxy to areas of instability
where "freedom and self-determination" were threatened, meaning that
the governments there already were, or showed signs of becoming,
socialist. And all such militaristic actions taken with the expressed
purpose of preventing bloodshed, and similar aggression on the part of
Soviet Space (which required little prodding to respond in kind),
resulted in quite the opposite result: endless carnage and civil war.

That this same pattern of mutual confrontation had brought the Earth to
the brink of nuclear holocaust many times in the past, was apparently
all but forgotten by a bulk society with a historical attention span of
roughly five years. And every time, this cycle was repeated as if it
were something new, unique, and wholly necessary, by a people who
professed to be, and probably should have been, the most enlightened in
the galaxy.

N-B3

Not that anyone really expected the Americans to fight. They were for
the most part (deep down) morally opposed to violence, had not the
stomach for it. And blind, self-serving sheep that they were, the
middle class could only be deceived for so long.

Because this same, slow-thinking blob of humanity which elected and
gave the presidents their power, also set the limits for its use. In a
nation literally ruled by public opinion, they were like an anchor
unsoundly planted. The ship was free to drift a certain distance to
either side, but could never move too far in any one direction before
the anchor finally caught on some solid objection, and the movement was
brought to a halt. True, the angry seemed angrier this time, the
aggressive less easily pacified, and the Christian right-wing (a
contradiction of terms, for anyone the least familiar with Jesus'
teac