a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The

Movies were America’s way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defenses of audiences with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and, yes, even the box office bomb. It mattered not what story these audiences watched. The point was that it was the American story they watched and loved, up

(Nothing, the General muttered, is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.) At the end

Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?

feline feelings of both dependency and resentment.

swimmers doing the backstroke toward a waterfall.

(Nothing, the General muttered, is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.)

America, land of supermarkets and superhighways, of supersonic jets and Superman, of supercarriers and the Super Bowl! America, a country not content simply to give itself a name on its bloody birth, but one that insisted for the first time in history on a mysterious acronym, USA, a trifecta of letters outdone later only by the quartet of the USSR.

Whatever people say about the General today, I can only testify that he was a sincere man who believed in everything he said, even if it was a lie, which makes him not so different from most.