The Petty Straws of War | Discover Lloyd Bower's Thrilling Stories: Divide the Country, Freedom as Public Utility, The Results of Polar Bear Research & Keep These In the Family.
The Petty Straws of War
Like many Americans, I like to sample the opinions of average citizens from the comments they leave on social media, and feel dismay at the growing hostility and ideological gulf that separates the opposing sides. The Democrats take wealthy Republicans to task for their greed, hypocrisy, and racism. Republicans criticize the Democrats for their faith in discredited systems like Socialism and Egalitarianism. America does not need enemies. We are our own worst enemy! It makes me wonder why none of our leaders has suggested that we divide the United States to create new countries, one for each side, that embody the different value systems.
But when I suggest this in my own comments, my social media contacts reply, basically, "No, we're not going there." I feel I am talking to people with their hands over their ears, like they can barely entertain even the thought of doing such a thing. They question my motivation for suggesting it. One commenter even said dividing the U.S. would be unconstitutional. So, Americans keep slapping each other around; the hostility just stifles their creative thinking. Their politicians lament publicly the disunity, sympathize with their constituents, but do little to bring relief to the disunity, or to create a forum for forward-moving dialogue on this subject. I suppose a national division would jeopardize their careers.
They should look at what starts wars. Sometimes war starts from a dictatorial leader's plan to conquer the World. Other times, it follows a series of "incidents". Petty tit-for-tat acts of spite build on each other. The actual war starts with the straw that breaks the camel's back—by itself too insignificant to consider dangerous. America is flirting with the cumulative effect of all those petty straws. So I keep wondering why does the mutually hostile American populations remain in one piece? Will we just lumber along chaotically toward something more violent?
Most people in a freedom-loving nation want little more than to enjoy and utilize freedom in their small sphere of interest. They care little about strategic-type decision-making. Jay Leno, in his "Jaywalking" role, should stop average Americans and ask them questions about the future of the nation, on a strategic level. Maybe the people Leno stops will give careless answers, as if he expects them to answer intelligently questions about quantum mechanics or rocket propulsion. The episodes I have seen of Leno's "Jaywalking" should serve as a wake-up call to someone. Average American citizens know so little about the World, or even how their own government functions.
Most people in any country will let their leaders give them their marching orders. Afflicted by the connectedness of any social organization, they prefer to remain where they are. But social inertia can really turn the tables on someone. Consider the Jews in Germany and other countries during the rise of Nazism. German Jews considered themselves Germans, not Jews. They owned homes, cars, they had back accounts, and club memberships—assets that did not transfer easily to other countries: "Why should I move to Palestine? Germany is my home. I don't consider myself Jewish. Moving from Germany would be an unending hassle!" Futile excuses like those will come back to haunt us when groups in our country start hunting down the undesirables.
History moves like rivers, erupts like volcanoes, and spreads misery like floods or wildfires. History works more effectively as an unseen undercurrent than a headline attention-getter. Consider the human elements leading up to World War I: the French resented deeply having to cede Alsace-Lorraine to Germany; the Serbians resented Habsburg rule from the north and rule by the Ottoman Turks in the south; and archaic, inefficient monarchies saw spies and other enemies everywhwere. Their self-serving advisors had no sense of strategic planning. They had fantasy-driven notions of their military superiority and woefully spendthrift ideas about deploying their troops. By the time Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (in the present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina) the stage for war had already been set by years of petty slights.