Now that the Euros may end up in the cross-hairs of the Iranian nuclear weapons & their matching missile building, their perspective on a regional anti-ballistic missile system has gone through a major shift.
What they argued was reckless war-mongering on the part of the US to be developing an ABM system, now seems like a good idea to them now.
It brings to the Chief’s recollection the bit about nothing focusing the mind quite so intensely as the prospect of being hanged in the immediate future.
By the way, this is a very good analysis of the situation in the context of Orwell’s concept of “doublethink” which is recap’d in the piece:
Orwell’s own description of doublethink is set out as follows:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies-all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”