Brooding on war after reading a scary book

The cover of my sweetheart’s scheduling device, which she uses to keep track of her students’ lessons. (Photo taken by permission.)

Dear diary,

I’m not in a good mood to write, because I spent all my free time yesterday finishing reading that book that I was telling you about, Kill Anything That Moves, by Nick Turse. It’s a book about war. It tells what the U.S. actually did in Vietnam, some decades ago. It’s a vision worse than any picture of Hell that I’ve heard described — take the scariest sermon by the most sadistic Christian, and it’s worse than that. And the U.S. caused this Hell to happen.

So I live in this country that is responsible for instigating infernal conditions in other nations. What does that mean, for me and for my life, now that I know these truths: In order to exonerate myself of this sin that I have inherited, or to pay my debt to Morality, do I need to go out into the street in front of our house and calmly burn myself alive?

For Jesus said “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Or at least John said that Jesus said that (8:32). And being “made free” means becoming one with eternity, which is flux, whose earthly manifestation is raging flames. For Yahweh says “your breath, as fire, shall devour you. And the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire.” Or at least Isaiah says that Yahweh says that (33:11-12).

Maybe we should move the self-immolation back onto our driveway, so that we don’t block traffic.

But seriously, what should one do with the knowledge of the crimes of one’s own country? Especially when this knowledge isn’t a secret: it’s published in a book that anyone can read. Apparently we’re all OK with what our country has done (the rapes & murders), and what our country continues to do (the rapes & murders). Cuz I don’t see very many people self-immolating anymore. There were a number of such protests, back in the past; but now I guess we’ve moved on.

And no punishment ever gets meted out for these war crimes. What a funny phrase: war crimes. Isn’t war itself just one vast crime? I think we’re running into the same problem as we did with the notion of rights, which I explained in my prizewinning essay “Nothing matters and you have no rights” — both crimes and rights are part of a game that we humans create. We ourselves make the rules of this game, thus these rules, when broken, need to be enforced: they don’t just enforce themselves, like the so-called rules of nature. You can’t argue with gravity, or break the “law of gravity” and get away with it until you’re finally found out. But a war crime is something that you can commit right in your own backyard, or better yet in the backyard of someone else’s country (that way, they’re the ones stuck cleaning up the mess), and if you’re not hauled off to jail by the police, you can just go home and sleep. I suggest falling asleep while watching television. Either the Miss America Pageant or the Miss Universe Pageant: those are both good shows, or so I’m told.

But this notion of law enforcement is also interesting. Say we have a robber and a cop. It’s easy for the cop to catch and handcuff the robber, because the robber’s gun is always a little smaller than the cop’s gun; thus when the robber leaves the jewelry store with his tote bag overfilled with sapphires and emeralds (they’re spilling out on the ground and leaving a trail as he flees), the cop yells “Halt!” and the robber looks back, aims his gun at the cop, and shoots; but the cop then un-holsters his much larger gun and takes careful aim at this bullet that the robber’s gun discharged, and our officer of the law shoots his own bigger bullet in that direction: what happens is that the two bullets collide, and the amount of volume that each parcel of ammunition had in common is canceled out (incidentally, this is a good example of a natural rule), while the volume that the policeman’s bullet possesses in excess of the bullet that was shot by the robber continues on its path toward the robber’s firearm, until it reaches the tip of its barrel, which it (the surviving bulk of our officer’s bullet) contacts, thus causing a firework ten times greater than ten suns exploding. Now the robber is hindered from escaping, and our policeman remarks “I am Death, the destroyer of worlds.” (He’s quoting Vishnu, the father of Jesus and Lucifer.) Then the cop places the handcuffs on the robber and hauls him to jail. No court date or jury trial is necessary, since robbers forfeit their rights on the day they are born.

Compare the above to what happened in Vietnam, once upon a time. In the case of Vietnam, the U.S. is like a cat-burglar committing a whole string of robberies. However, when the policeman…

Wait — do you see? we have already run into a problem: for who would the policeman be played by, if the U.S. is already performing the role of the cat-burglar? Are you seriously going to tell me that the policeman should be played by the United Nations? I don’t think that the United Nations has enough experience as a thespian to take on a role as emotionally demanding as a law-enforcement officer. We’ll just have to let the U.S. play both roles — after all, it’s not a live play, it’s a movie: so we can do tricky editing to make the performances seem distinct, like when Peter Sellers plays not only the titular role but also the British officer and the President of the United States in the film Dr. Strangelove (1964).

OK but here’s my point: The U.S. cat-burgles a given country, and then the cop (played by the U.S.) chases the U.S.; and the whole plot unfolds as it did above, until the guns are drawn. Note the size of the robber’s gun, in this instance: it’s enormous. It’s much bigger than the cop’s gun. So that’s why war crimes are never punished: You can’t just drag the U.S. off to jail without first giving it a trial with a jury of its peers. And the U.S. also plays the judge in its own trial, so it’s got a triple role, just like the aforementioned Sellers, and it wins an Academy award for Best Country Ever. Instead, the prisons are stuffed with whistleblowers.

But I wasn’t even born when the whole Vietnam outrage occurred. I was just a polar bear in Alaska. So why do I feel so guilty about all the atrocities that were committed therein? Well because I have no idea how much of the pleasant aspects of my current life as a U.S. citizen are the result of my country’s favorite pastime of rape-&-murder. It’s the same thing with slavery, and with the genocide that this righteous nation was founded upon. If a baby is born on U.S. soil tomorrow afternoon, how long can you nurse it before you must place the handcuffs on its wrists and toss it in jail, because all that milk that nourished its life was stolen! Additionally, how can any U.S. citizen who knows about these horrible things that her country has done continue to shuffle to work everyday: How can one perform such mundane tasks, as an accountant ensuring that her balance sheet’s numbers are prim, when one knows that one’s peaceful existence was made possible by a generous donation from Violent Mayhem?

Plus all the foregoing conundrums result exclusively from our contemplating the crimes of the past — what happens when we add in the wars of the present (for the U.S.A. is warring in multiple countries, even this instant: it’s so many conflicts that we’ve lost count), which are occurring in places whose names we’ve never heard before & can barely pronounce… Or what about the wars to come, the future wars, the ones that, as we laze here, the hawkish bigwigs are gearing to instigate?

We really do have a well-regulated Militia. I guess that’s good. They say that’s what’s necessary for the security of a free State.

If all these countries would stop attacking us, maybe we wouldn’t need a Department of Defense. Why are all these countries declaring war on us, anyway?

The countries themselves answer that the U.S. started it. But that’s impossible by definition. Haven’t you heard — I think it’s in the Bible somewhere, or maybe Bill Clinton said it, while doing that lawyerly finger-wag: “We did NOT start that fire.”

*

I don’t like where this post is going. Or rather where it went (cuz it’s pretty much over now). I say about peaceniks what Steve Zissou says about fathers, in The Life Aquatic (2004): I hate anti-war activists, and I never wanted to be one. There is no Gospel where Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9); NO! he says, “The LORD is a man of war” (Exodus 15:3).

It may sound like I’m being jokey and stating these things ironically, but I’m actually trying to tell you the straightforward facts: I adore warfare, but I just wish that it would be limited to the mental realm, the spiritual realm, and stop haunting the physical realm so stupidly. That’s boring and vulgar. Let’s fire up the war FOR THE MIND. I’ll take the Devil’s side, and you can fight for God.

We war not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Those are the words of the Apostle Paul, my own archenemy. I wanna meet him on the battlefield and rip out his guts. But dead men don’t dream; and that’s why I’m so pissed that we keep inventing toy guns that shoot real water. That’s holy vodka from the baptismal tub, you dipstick.

CONCLUSION

Nah, I’m just pulling your leg. I like Paul, and I like flesh-and-blood combat. I liked Jesus better as the LORD; & I’m complicit with the C.I.A. because I refuse to self-immolate.

I’m mostly concerned that the people who gained more riches than they can ever spend in a lifetime, on account of the fact that they have a very small imagination (which is a prerequisite to earning more riches than one can spend in a lifetime), get to KEEP those riches that cannot do their owner any good, as they are holed up in a tax haven. The worst thing imaginable to the unimaginative is that…

After the ellipsis, I was gonna make some snooty remark about the redistribution of overabundance, but I’ve grown tired of this routine; I’d rather join what cannot be beat, because resources are limited!! There is NOT endless space beyond what we can see; there is NOT endless time beyond what we have measured — no: Time and Space are Running Out. (That should be the title of the next pamphlet that our Non-profit Charity drops from its helicopters; the purpose will be to convince people in lower-income areas to donate money to our cause.) So I’ll end with that identical phrase above (see the previous paragraph, which I left definitively unfinished), but I’ll add a full stop, so that the final “that” might be taken to refer to the very text of this here entry.

The worst thing imaginable to the unimaginative is that.