What an absolute joke the rulers are. They tell everyone that it's a man eat man world, and the only way to survive it is to fight each other, but then the very instant someone actually brings a legitimate challenge against the rulers themselves, they lose their collective shit.
>…such as some of the places in the middle east where we're trying to establish nationhood.
Damn that line is interesting to me. Was talking with an Afghan not too long ago and asked if he knew of Tartary. He didn't, but when I said that the publishers wrote it out of history in 1912, he shocked me by saying that's the exact same thing happening in Afghanistan today: They bring in soldiers and terrorists to wipe out small local councils and governments, then claim that they've always been part of the regional/national political system.