This monopoly grants the State an exclusive privilege to commit acts that would constitute crimes for private actors. Government redefines its theft as “taxation,” counterfeiting as “inflation,” kidnapping as “imprisonment,” mass murder as “war,” etc. The State’s authority hinges not on any logical or moral legitimacy, which it lacks, but on its guns, its cops, its military. Might has always made right. The citizens must remain ignorant of this truth. The rulers employ numerous smokescreens to camouflage the nature of their power. Propaganda abounds, becoming the wallpaper of society. “Smokescreens” and “propaganda” permeated a conference I attended for work, more than two and a half years after Lorna’s evaporation. Election season was heating up. Incumbent upon the Permanent Regime was that its employees, especially those in key departments such as mine, possess the proper spirit. Two months earlier the government had increased its workers’ dosage of “thought stoppers”
