Jekyll_text

560 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
and on a limited scale, but it is still doubtful that it will ever equal
the hysteria potential of a physical war. The world planners will
not abandon the use of war until the new model has been proven
over many years. On that point, the Report from Iron Mountain was
emphatic:
When asked how best to prepare for the advent of peace, we must
first reply, as strongly as we can, that the war system cannot
responsibly be allowed to disappear until 1) we know exactly what it
is we plan to put in its place, and 2) we are certain, beyond reasonable
doubt, that these substitute institutions will serve their purposes in
terms of the survival and stability of society.... It is uncertain, at this
time, whether peace will ever be possible. It is far more questionable
. . . that it would be desirable even if it were demonstrably attainable.
REGIONALISM AS A TRANSITION TO WORLD
GOVERNMENT
The coalescing of the world's nations into three regional
superstates was already visible even before we activated our time
machine. The first steps had been strictly economic but were soon
followed by political and military consolidation. The European
Union (EU), including Russia, began with the issuance of a
common money and eventually merged into a functional regional
government. It was Orwell's Eurasia, even though it avoided
calling itself by that name. Treaties binding Canada, the United
States,
Mexico, and South America formed the basic outline of
Oceania, built around the Federal-Reserve Note as the regional
money. Japan eventually became hostile to the West when trading
was no longer to her sole advantage and, along with China which
had been built up by Western aid and technology, and with India
which had been given atomic technology by the West, became the
political center of Eastasia. Even as far back as the 1980s, it was
known as the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere/' Its monetary
system was to be based upon the Yen.
The people of the former nations were not yet ready for a giant
leap into world government. They had to be led to that goal by a
series of shorter and less frightening steps. They were more willing
to surrender their economic and military independence to regional
groupings of people who were closer in ethnic and cultural origin
and who shared common borders. Only after several decades of
1. Ibid., pp. 88-90.
transition was it
A PESSIMISTIC SCENARIO 561
possible to make the final merger. In the meantime,
the world was plunged alternately between war and peace.
After each cycle of war, the population was more frightened,
impoverished, and collectivised. In the end, world government was
irresistible. By that time, the environmental-pollution model and
the alien-invasion model had been perfected to provide high levels
of human motivation. But, even then, regional uprisings were
occasionally engineered when necessary to justify massive
"peacekeeping" operations. War was never fully abandoned. It
remained, as it always had been, a necessity for the stabilization of
society.
HOW FIXED IS THE FUTURE?
Let us return now to the present from which we departed and
reflect upon our journey. The first thing that strikes us is that we
cannot be certain the future will unfold exactly as we have seen it.
There are too many variables. When we originally set our Primary-
Assumption selector to Present trends unaltered, we left the Secondary-
Assumption selector where it was. It was pointing to Banking Crisis.
Had we chosen the next position, No Banking Crisis, our journey
would have been different. We would not have seen long lines of
depositors or panic-buying in
the stores or closing of the stock
market. But we would still have witnessed the same scenes of
despair in the more distant future. We merely would have travelled
a different path of events to get there.
The forces driving our society into global totalitarianism would
not change one iota. We still would have the doomsday mechanisms
at work. We would have the CFR in control of the power
centers of government and the media. And we would have an
electorate which is
unaware of what is being done to them and,
therefore, unable to resist. Through environmental and economic
treaties and through military disarmament to the UN, we would
witness the same emergence of a world central bank, a world
government, and a world army to enforce its dictates. Inflation and
wage/price controls would have progressed more or less the same,
driving consumer goods out of existence and men into bondage.
Instead of moving toward The New World Order in a series of
economic spasms, we merely would have travelled a less violent
path and arrived at exactly the same destination.