Man, I'm getting a wierd vibe from this blog. There's a drumbeat, it's soft now, but getting louder. I'm getting the sense that it's them or us, and if it's to be us, it's not important how many of them we have to dispatch, no guilt, just get on with it, start piling them up.

Remember what it felt like to think it was "Johnson's war"? Remember the comtempt of the keenly-aware young, being exhorted by the olds to do their patriotic duty and go fight and die in some far-off land, so that the olds could live in comfort and without worry? Remember Kantorek?

Is this the new (old) 21Cen concept of total war? Not civil ideology, not mercantile or empire disputes between nations, no desire to claim territory or economic colonies, but a slow ratchet toward convincing oneself that one way or another, the herd has to be thinned?

The cause of all this, is that there are too many people not enjoying the benefits of modernity, outsiders looking in and denied the feast (for whatever reason, and we all know the reason). This situation is unstable.

Nations have lives and personalities of their own, and in some ways can act as one creature. The situation internationally can be likened, perhaps, to that of the nasty little brat 5-year-old who insists on pulling the ears of a rottweiler - one of the sort that is a gentle giant - and won't stop even when the dog starts showing signs of running out of patience.

And then there is one last pull, and the patience of the dog snaps - and the little brat finds out, briefly, that annoying something ten times your weight with big teeth isn't a good idea.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now part of history, which few now living experienced even at long remove - especially as adults. Both towns are now bustling cities, with little evidence of the Lovecraftian horror that visited Earth for a little while, sixty-seven years ago. And so, our enemies forget.

Perhaps, just perhaps, one way of avoiding the coming apocalypse would be to institute a ten-yearly ritual, to be carried out in some remote place, with all the world's leaders and the Press invited to watch from a safe distance. The centrepiece of the ritual to be the detonation of a nuke - maybe 5 megatons or so.

And all those leaders would see the Light that hurts the eyes even through a welder's mask, and feel the heat like Hell's door opening, and hear the blast like that door slamming shut again, and know just what it is that waits for anyone who fouls up badly enough.