Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp, #18)

by Kyle Mills

“The American people don’t give a crap about political positions and they care even less about the truth. What they want is fireworks. They want a show and we’ve just been handed the script. While the other side talks about health care and the economy, we’ll be talking about Islamic terrorists unleashing a plague that could wipe our country out. About watching your children die while Irene Kennedy covers her ass and Mitch Rapp chases his tail. This is a gift, Kevin. Use it.”

While social media was one of the most powerful weapons ever devised by man, it wasn’t that platform’s ability to disseminate false information that was useful to him at the moment. It was other people’s willingness to use it to strip themselves of their secrets.

Manipulation was the secret to victory in the modern world. Not force.

America’s ability to adapt and reinvent itself had been stripped away by politicians who had trained their constituents to view change with fear and anger.

In an America trained to react only to partisanship, her message was finding an audience. It was human nature to hate the traitor more intensely than the enemy, and in America the two parties were increasingly using the language of treason when referring to each other.

“What they want—what they thirst for—is to hurt the people they hate. They don’t want a politician droning on about unemployment. They want a general. They want to blindly follow someone who can provide them an enemy and lead them to victory against that enemy. Someone who can give their lives purpose.”