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To young or old nations. Particularly to ones that have never felt the stomp of a conqueror's boot on their native soil. Have not endured defeat. Not suffered humility in a long, long time. Forgot what it's like. Vanity, like that in a Congress of aristocracy and a Senate of gentry, or an Executive branch of an unchecked and self-appointed oligarchy, is a flaw easy to detect, but ornery as hell to rectify. Because it suits the handful who governs. Sweetens their palate. And they'll fight with rabid fury any and all change threatening their post.
"Power is never easy to step down from, Patrick. But in the history of mankind there has never, never, been enlightenment in power. Never has--a smidgen even of--good come out of it. Except a dominion's own degeneration. It falls from within itself--like the dominion of dinosaurs."
The Sachem, what they used to call grandpa--a Ph.D. in Social Science and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Government School seemed as good a testimonial as any--taught one thing and lived another. He had done this to survive the anachronistic despotism that somehow crept in and managed to rule unchallenged over half of the world for nearly half a century.
The wealthy half.
"Before it had become through-and-through ripe," the old man had told him, "and impose itself by force in 2020, tyranny had been noiselessly but resolutely slithering like a pit viper closing in. Oppression had been smoldering like smokeless coal before the flash of kindling for more than twenty years.
"And when the tinder burst to flame, the utopia of a 'new world order of things' turned into a world incubus. Abreast of the rise of the three camps: internationalism, nationalism and fundamentalism came the threat of international gray zones where law had no effect, nationally or otherwise. Here, Patrick, globalized organized crime burgeoned in the form of economical, defense-hysteria, mass-media, Mafia, drug-digital, nuclear, biochemical terrorism."
Chickbrow's grandfather in all modesty was set on besetting his damage over the greatest number of top honchos over the longest period. He was part Hammurabi, part Confucius and Alexander, a Che and a Nathan Hale. But most of all he was true American. To the marrow, a Brave.
"Babylon, Persia, Rome were not brought to their knees by conquerors from outside. They were vanquished, devastated, from within. First by narcissism and self-induced conspiracy, then by biting off more than they could chew. By sheer snow-balling. Through an avalanche of their own over-confidence. Soviet communism lasted a little over seventy years, Yankee capitalism almost two-hundred-and-fifty..."
The third millennium, Chickbrow reflected, was going to be full of surprises. His own removal from the space team had been one. And racism had everything to do with it. Contempt for minorities had been another. It seemed there are cycles in history in which some form of intolerance prevails speechlessly under a benign guise. The circumstances, in this century as well as the previous one, were favoring the stooped-head, the Hi-Tech informer, the corporate yes-man, the company infiltrator.
Definitely not the redman.