Fadmongering is a colossal industry. It endures because conforming to fashion trends and directives helps us to fit in.

[…] the immovable McCoy let fly his most miraculous punch of the evening, of his lives, a world-beater of a right corkscrew, a punch years in the windup […]

However important the use of hoplites against, or in support of, troops of other arms had become, their chief function was still to fight other hoplites, though the battles of the early fourth century were very different from the ponderous confrontations that had filled King Xerxes and his courtiers with contempt.

In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […] The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra–wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.