All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

I wrote an article about the marine landing [in Haiti] right away, but barely mentioned the oil, because my article would come out two months later and I assumed by then, "of course, everybody knows." Nobody knew. There was a news report in the Wall Street Journal, in the petroleum journals, and in some small newspapers, but not in the mainstream press.

There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism.

I think that we have basically nothing in the field of human behavior. Maybe that is just a condition of temporary ignorance. But it may be that we are simply not intellectually equipped to develop such a theory.

People tend to rally around power.

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

This is real. This is the real mad man theory. We have to be irrational and vindictive, so people don't know what we're up to. This is not [Donald] Trump and [Steve] Bannon, it's from the [Bill] Clinton era.