https://www.brighteon.com/0bba0c5b-2fbc-49b5-b3b3-4984643970b5

“Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together– what do you get? The sum of their fears. –Winston Churchill

[T]he two contenders met, with all their troops, on the field of Camlan to negotiate. Both sides fully armed and desperately suspicious that the other side was going to try, some ruse or stratagem. The negotiations were going along smoothly until one of the knights was stung by an asp and drew his sword to kill the reptile. The others saw the sword being drawn and immediately fell upon each other. A tremendous slaughter ensued. The chronicle … is quite specific about the point that the slaughter was excessive chiefly because the battle took place without preparations and premeditation. -Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War

https://www.brighteon.com/d125bbf1-604d-4836-b23a-8cfd18e6ae86

“Courage, though, he’d been told, was being only one who knew how terrified you were.”

Tom Clancy, Red Rabbit

* I’m on a J. R. R. Tolkien roll today, “The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.”