The Simulacra

by Philip K. Dick

And yet wasn’t this actually the most likely place for the Sons of Job to show themselves? This decadent region reeked of defeat; here lived those who had failed, Bes who held no real role in the system. The Sons of Job, like the Nazis of the past, fed on disappointment, on the disinherited. Yes, these backwater towns which time had bypassed were the movement’s authentic feeding-ground. . . . It should not have surprised him, then, to see this. But these were not Germans; these were Americans. It was a sobering thought. Because he could not dismiss the Sons of Job as a symptom of the ceaseless, unchanging derangement of the German mentality; that was too pat, too simple. These were his own people marching here today, his countrymen. It could have been him, too; if he were to lose his job with EME or suffer some crushing, humiliating social experience— “Look at them,” Molly said. “I am looking,” Nat answered. “And you’re thinking, ‘It could be me.’ Right? Frankly, I doubt if you have the guts to march in public in support of your convictions; in fact I doubt if you have any convictions.