It is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens, which I suppose is what Nietzsche meant when he said God is dead.
—Flannery O’Connor

Something in all men profoundly rejoices in seeing a car burn.
—Jean Baudrillard

Picture this droll scenario. Two hundred and thirty-nine young men are writing to their families, drinking with their buddies, shining shoes, talking to their girlfriends on the phone. They do not know that on October 23, 1983, 3 truck will slam through the gate of their Marine compound in Beirut, exploding and killing them gruesomely, without a fight. During this same period, partisans and bystanders are being shot daily in Ireland, El Salvador, Angola, Iran, and countless other bewildering locales. The United States and the Soviet Union, nurturing contrary interests in several of these regional abattoirs, confront each other with extravagant nuclear arsenals. And meanwhile, a certain sociology teacher at the University of Paris facility in Nanterre records a few rueful complaints: “what no longer exists is the adversity of adversaries, the reality of antagonistic causes, the ideological seriousness of war” and “entry into the atomic club, so amusingly named, very rapidly removes . . . any inclination towards violent intervention.” Within pages, warming to his conviction that deterrence, safety regulations, and even ecological precautions are