Imperial Breakdown

What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one? What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbors that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him?

What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children?

What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned him? And he took another child who obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors?

What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes?

What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even in the suburbs?

Such a man would clearly be a paranoid schizophrenic... with homicidal tendencies.

- Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy