When do the defense measures of a paranoid country become their own agents of self-destruction?

The Greeks used to say that gods and animals were born whole. It is only humans who need to develop, that they become complete only with the help of a community. It’s the state of that community that can turn a human into a god or a beast.” She dropped the bee into the terrarium and returned it slowly to the table. “Maybe that’s bullshit. I happen to like the beasts.

...we're a people who pollute the very air we breathe. And our rivers. We're destroying the great lakes; Erie is already gone, and now we've begun on the oceans. We filled our atmosphere with radioactive fallout that put poison into our children's bones, and we knew it. We've made bombs that can wipe out humanity in minutes, and they are aimed and ready to fire. We ended polio, and then the United States Army bred new strains of germs that can cause fatal, incurable disease. We had a chance to do justice to our Negroes, and when they asked it, we refused. In Asia we burned people alive, we really did. We allow children to grow up malnourished in the United States. We allow people to make money by using our television channels to pursued our own children to smoke, knowing what it is going to do to them. This is a time when it becomes harder and harder to continue telling yourself that we are still good people. We hate each other. And we're used to it.

Ironically, the very substances that people become dependent on to evade their own self destruction are the catalysts of that process.

Thou hast but enraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.

N it's fuckin well beyond violence, it's beyond even sexual; it's a kind ay love, a fuckin bizarre, vain-glorious self-adoration, way past the fuckin ego even. Ah'm findin somethin...ah'm...but it's what bein a hard man is aboot; it's a journey, a fuckin self-destructive quest tae find yir limits, cause they fuckin limits eywis come in the form ay a harder man. A big, stong, stiff-hard man whae can dae it for ye, whae can teach ye, show ye whaire ye stand, where yir fuckin parameters ur.