The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from th… - Lewis Mumford

This New World utopia, this promised land, was soon buried under the ashes and cinders that erupted over the Western World in the nineteenth century, thanks tot he resurrection and intensification of all the forces that had originally brought 'civilization' itself into existence. The rise of the centralized state, teh expansion of the bureaucracy and the conscript army, the regimentation of the factory system, the depredations of speculative finance, the spread of imperialism, as in the Mexican War, and the continued encroachment of slavery-all these negative movements not only sullied the New World dream but brought back on a larger scale than ever the Old World nightmares that the immigrants to America had risked their lives and forfeited their cultural treasures to escape.

The masters of the underground citadel are committed to a 'war' they cannot bring to an end, with weapons whose ultimate effects they cannot control, for purposes that they cannot accomplish.

"For while a whole day spent in gardening is the best of anodynes and the most benign of soporifics, the higher functions of the mind go to sleep after all heavy work: indeed physical fatigue has done more to prevent rebellions against the harsh exactions of daily work than either strong drink or brute pressure. Even the benign Emerson could say shrewdly about the immigrant labor gangs which build the first railroads, toiling at starvation pay for fifteen or sixteen hours a day: "It served better than the police to preserve order.