TM 179 -- Empire Wrecking
"What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the up building of one… There's good money in empire building. But, there's more in empire wrecking." -- Rhett Butler in "Gone With The Wind"
It's tempting to say that I have a former employer who would have agreed with this, and indeed certain members of the Wolfram & Hart organization might have fancied themselves to be mustachioed swashbucklers. They liked to talk a good game about feeding on chaos and conflict and, indeed, my group was given control of the firm, explicitly, as -- well, I believe it was phrased -- a reward for ending world peace. Wolfram & Hart was evil incorporated, thriving off the disorder of constant violence, making sure to be the ones to pick up the pieces. You've heard of the newspaper editors who got rich off the Spanish-American war, the arms manufacturers who sat down and counted their money while men choked their lungs out in the trenches? That was my firm.
Except that, when we got behind the scenes, it didn't exactly work that way. Whoever the Senior Partners may be -- I have my theories, but even after I spent that much time in the upper echelon, they can be no more than speculation -- only like their 'ruins of civilization' to go so far. True randomness, genuine disorder frightens them the way it frightens no one else. Even under the reign of Jasmine -- the much dreaded 'world peace,' in which everything would have been ordered and predictable -- I can't help thinking that the Senior Partners would have found a way to assert themselves. But in a state of actual chaos, there would be nothing to ensure that the mercenaries and schemers would come out on top.
Here's the truth about Wolfram & Hart: it can thrive on the wreckage of any empire, besides its own.
That is, I suppose, why Angel and I don't work there anymore.
It's tempting to say that I have a former employer who would have agreed with this, and indeed certain members of the Wolfram & Hart organization might have fancied themselves to be mustachioed swashbucklers. They liked to talk a good game about feeding on chaos and conflict and, indeed, my group was given control of the firm, explicitly, as -- well, I believe it was phrased -- a reward for ending world peace. Wolfram & Hart was evil incorporated, thriving off the disorder of constant violence, making sure to be the ones to pick up the pieces. You've heard of the newspaper editors who got rich off the Spanish-American war, the arms manufacturers who sat down and counted their money while men choked their lungs out in the trenches? That was my firm.
Except that, when we got behind the scenes, it didn't exactly work that way. Whoever the Senior Partners may be -- I have my theories, but even after I spent that much time in the upper echelon, they can be no more than speculation -- only like their 'ruins of civilization' to go so far. True randomness, genuine disorder frightens them the way it frightens no one else. Even under the reign of Jasmine -- the much dreaded 'world peace,' in which everything would have been ordered and predictable -- I can't help thinking that the Senior Partners would have found a way to assert themselves. But in a state of actual chaos, there would be nothing to ensure that the mercenaries and schemers would come out on top.
Here's the truth about Wolfram & Hart: it can thrive on the wreckage of any empire, besides its own.
That is, I suppose, why Angel and I don't work there anymore.