Read Online Operation Damocles by Oscar L. Fellows - Free Book Online Page B

Taylor? What about the frustrations of life that cause someone to eventually snap? The claptrap you just spouted is the rhetoric the government uses to describe people when they are trying to color public opinion. It’s called spin-doctoring . They characterize everyone that disagrees with them as antisocial or extremist, or a group of people as a cult, just to bias public opinion. You’re simply mouthing those standard phrases, Dr. Taylor, and avoiding discussing specifics. Do you even have a glimmer of what a real cause might be?”
    Taylor recovered his composure, and smiled condescendingly. “Beverly, it may sound like standard phrases, but someone has to be mentally maladjusted to take out their petty grievances on society by random killing. These people can appear like normal individuals on the surface, but it’s just a face they don for others. They truly are paranoid inside. They behave like normal, social individuals on the surface. Phrases like government conspiracy, peoples’ revolution and other holy cause jargon are keys to the deep, underlying mental aberrations of these kooks. They tend to group together, like scared vermin backed into a corner. They’re eaten up with the belief that the world is out to get them.”
    Watkins gazed at Taylor a moment before responding. “First of all, they haven’t killed anyone, randomly or otherwise, Dr. Taylor. Second, they are threatening a very specific action, the destruction of the business and political centers of the nation. They haven’t used any of the phrases you’ve mentioned. The individual on the tape doesn’t mention affiliation with any group, paranoid or otherwise. Assuming there is a group, how can they be classified as loners, or antisocial, and what exactly do you mean by your use of the term paranoid?”
    Taylor shifted in his chair, leaning forward and bringing hand gestures into play, warming to his live audience of one, and visualizing himself in the headlines tomorrow as an authority who had mesmerized his unseen TV audience with his sagacity. “Generally speaking,” he said, “people are paranoid when they falsely believe that there is a collaborative effort by others, a conspiracy if you will, to ‘get them’.” Taylor emphasized quotation marks in the air with the two fingers of each hand. “These people really are loners, they just pretend to be sociable in public. In other words, they generally don’t have any real friends, Beverly, they simply band together out of fear.” He smiled. “The psychosis begins to develop in childhood and gradually gets worse as the individual matures, until eventually, they can’t function within the framework of normal society at all.”
    Watkins leaned back in her chair casually, studying Taylor, and said, “I take it then that you do not believe in temporary insanity, per se ?”
    Taylor’s expression grew serious and he said, guardedly, “What makes you say that?”
    “In generalizing, you have just stated that anyone who commits a violent act against society has a cleverly concealed, chronic mental aberration that started in childhood. Nobody just ‘loses it’ spontaneously. Nobody is ever mad or frustrated with good reason. Let me ask you then . . . when factions of congress and local business get together and say they want to raise taxes on the American people so that they can buy a few votes with some pork-barrel project, can that be classified as a conspiracy?”
    “Not really, Beverly, it’s just routine government business. We have to have taxes and government. Unfortunately, some misuse of authority goes with the territory. Human beings are corruptible.”
    “So taxpayers who believe they are being robbed by a sneaky, insidious government that has become an institution of crooks that aid and abet one another for personal gain, are actually just paranoid kooks?”
    Taylor’s regard was no longer condescending; he answered cautiously, “I think that’s a bit extreme, and a bit