"[N]early all human beings have an extremely intermittent grasp on reality. Only a few things, which illustrate their own interests and ideas, are real to them; and other things, which are in fact equally real, appear to them as abstractions. Thus, when men have decided to pursue a course of action, everything which seems to support this seems vivid and real; everything which stands against it becomes abstraction. Your friends are allies and therefore real human beings with flesh and blood sympathies like yourself. Your opponents are just tiresome, unreasonable, unnecessary theses, whose lives are so many false statements which you would like to strike out with a lead bullet as you would put the stroke of a lead pencil through a bungled paragraph."
--Stephen Spender, in "The God That Failed," 1949

Nearly all human beings would like to violently murder their political opponents?

Can't say I agree.

I think that Mr. Spender needs to switch to decaf. I don't believe that all of us are as focused and intense with regard to pursuing our goals at all costs and especially at the expense of others.

Great quotation describing a key phenomenon of human life. But it could be improved by toning down the "most human beings." Too strong, but one can see why he would say this in 1949.

I've got a question. Do you think those who are in government realize that the policies that they sponsor create problems that they then insist that government needs to address?

Are they smart enough to understand the self-perpetuation angle?