Here is an excerpt from Chris Hedges' talk at the University of Western Ontario.
It is his summary of where we are today, and how we have gotten here.
"When one knows it is possible to kill without risking either punishment or blame, one kills; or at least one surrounds those who kill with encouraging smiles. If one feels a little disgust, one keeps quiet about it, and before long one extinguishes it, for fear of seeming to lack manliness. One is swept up; it is an intoxication impossible to resist without a strength of soul I am obliged to consider exceptional."
Simone Weil, Paris, 1938