Free Operation Damocles by Oscar L. Fellows Page B

1950s.”
    “Why, Dr. Taylor, you sound like a conspiracy nut,” said Watkins, her chin resting in her hand, eyes wide in mock amazement.
    Taylor fumed. “They don’t realize that you can’t force people to change their way of thinking at gunpoint. Americans like to gripe and complain, but when it comes down to it, they want someone in authority to tell them what to do. You cannot stir up patriotic ire by threatening to destroy part of the population. No one has ever tried that.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Watkins responded disdainfully. “Hitler did it in Germany in the 1930s; the United States did it in Europe and Japan in the 1940s, Korea in the 1950s, Viet Nam in the 1970s and Iraq in the 1990s. Russia did it in Afghanistan in the 1960s through the 1980s, and in Chechnya in the 1990s. The Serbs and Croats did it in Bosnia in the 1990s. The Israelis, Egyptians and Jordanians have been doing it continually since before the dawn of history. Those are just a few of the thousands of examples. It would take more air time than we have just to name all the wars, great and small, of the past two centuries, let alone in the history of the world, that have started because a population became divided over issues just like those we face today. They all must have had some reasons other than just mass psychosis and mass paranoia, Dr. Taylor.”
    “Those were wars, Beverly. This is at most a handful of people.”
    “How many does it take to make a war, Dr. Taylor?”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Never more so.”
    “It takes more than a few psychotic whackos, I can tell you that, Ms. Watkins.”
    “Since these ‘psychotic whackos’ aren’t just randomly killing people for the fun of it, and actually seem to be pleading with people to change the country in their own best interests, I can’t see them as disgruntled government employees that kill a bunch of innocent people just because they got fired, or because their wives left them. They appear to exhibit the same kind of nationalism and ideological purpose that all these other wars of mass destruction have been fought over. What if they’re just madder than hell, and aren’t going to take it anymore, to borrow a phrase?”
    There was a pregnant pause, during which Watkins and Taylor simply eyed one another balefully.
    “When people get mad, Dr. Taylor, occasionally it’s for a reason. Like the first American colonists, they revolt when they feel mistreated by an insensitive government that not only pays them no attention, but taxes them, dictates to them and harasses them at will. They rebel. They threaten and demand. They strike back at their tormentors, and the violence of their outcry is a measure of how strongly they feel and how frustrated they are in trying to do something about it.”
    Taylor stood up, his face angry and flushed, and glared down on an unperturbed woman who appeared even at her lower angle, to be looking down her nose at him. “No sane person believes he can change the world by force, Mrs. Watkins. These people are psychotics who invent causes to kill and die for. They can hire people with brains to build a weapon, and to put it into orbit.”
    “It’s certainly news to me, Dr. Taylor, that sane people don’t believe in the use of force. It happens every day and is advocated by parents, employers, the police, the courts and the government. Even lovers use some form of coercion on a regular basis. In fact, force—and the threat of force—is behind everything organized society does. Everybody seems intent on bending someone else to their will by threat of some penalty or punishment. Throughout history, a lot of people, mainly revolutionaries and established governments, have effectively changed the world for better or worse through use of force. Every turning point in history is marked by a war. In fact, force seems to be the most common instrument of social change.”
    “That doesn’t mean that a few dissatisfied individuals have the