The state is merely the modern pretence

“The state is merely the modern pretence, a shield, a make-belief, a concept. In reality, the ancient war-god holds the sacrificial knife, for it is in war that the sheep are sacrificed…So instead of human representatives or a personal divine being, we now have the dark gods of the state…The old gods are coming to life again in a time when they should have been superseded long ago, and nobody can see it.” (Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra)