What such polemics overlook is the terrifying probability that events may happen so rapidly that no one on either the Communist or anti-Communist side is capable of assimilating a new datum, such as the development of the hydrogen bomb, the death of Stalin, or the appearance of Israel among the nations, _until well after the event has occurred_. The occurrence of public events in all past civilizations has involved a considerable number of public agreements on the major hypotheses concerned; as pointed out earlier in this book, the antagonists in older wars usually, though not always, knew what the war was about. Today the spiritual, psychological, logical, and scientific inconsistencies and paradoxes within each system are so deep as to make the definition of long-range goals almost impossible. Any one goal, such as the establishment of peace, the appreciation of an international system of alliances against aggression, the maintenance of national sovereignty, the protection of a free-enterprise economy, the assurance of self-determination to non-self-governing peoples, or the like, may, _if emphasized_, contradict the concomitant goals which support it. =Communist and Anti-Communist Psychological Events.= Each of the two major systems has strengths of its own. The Communist strengths are sometimes too apparent to Americans, so much so that Americans exaggerate Communist power and overlook serious deficiencies in the economies and the political character of the Communist group of nations. The Communists can suppress dissidence with a fanatical party line: the price they pay is the abrupt shifting of that line as international situations change. The Communists can appeal to youth by their dogmatic faith that they are the masters of the probable future of the world: they risk much if this faith does not pay off and if the world's youth sometimes turns against them because they promise too much and deliver too little. The Communists operating from an allegedly material basis offer psychological and spiritual values of a perverted kind, but have very considerable propaganda value; they give people a chance to sacrifice themselves, to work for causes greater than their individual personalities, "something to die for," and an apparent understanding of history: yet the Communists also risk psychological exhaustion and cynicism among their élite cadres as well as among their mass followings.