War Preparers Anonymous by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut on the @@ scheme

"Compulsive preparers for World War III,
in this country or any other,
are as tragically and, yes, as repulsively
addicted as any stockbroker passed out
with his head in a toilet in Port Authority Bus Terminal.

"For an alcoholic to experience a little joy,
he needs maybe three ounces of grain alcohol.
Alcoholics, when they are close to hitting bottom,
customarily can't hold much alcohol.

"If we know a compulsive gambler who is dead broke,
we can probably make him happy with a dollar to bet
on who can spit further than someone else.

"For us to give a compulsive war-preparer a fleeting moment
of happiness, we may have to buy him three Trident submarines
and a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles mounted
on choo-choo trains.

"If Western Civilization were a person --

"If Western Civilization, which blankets the world now,
as far as I can tell,
were a person --

"If Western Civilization, which surely now includes the Soviet Union
and China and India and Pakistan and on and on, were a person --

"If Western Civilization were a person,
we would be directing it to the nearest meeting of
War Preparers Anonymous.
We would be telling it to stand up before the meeting and say,
'My name is Western Civilization. I am a compulsive war-preparer.
I have lost everything I ever cared about.
I should have come here long ago.
I first hit bottom in World War 1.'

"Western Civilization cannot be represented by a single person, of course, but a single explanation for the catastrophic course it has followed during this bloody century is possible. We the people, because of our ignorance of the disease, have again and again entrusted power to people we did not know were sickies.
"And let us not mock them now, any more than we would mock someone with syphillis or smallpox or leprosy or yaws or typhoid fever or any of the other diseases to which the flesh is heir. All we have to do is separate them from the levers of power, I think.
"And then what?
"Western Civilization's long, hard trip back to sobriety might begin.

found poem in "Fates Worse Than Death" page 134, 135