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paulkincaidI think it was Gertrude Stein who said, sometime in the 1930s, that the USA was the oldest nation on earth, because it had created the twentieth century and now everyone else was following in their wake. When I first came across this, my immediate thought was of war. The American Civil War had established a pattern that the great European wars of the twentieth century would follow, almost to the letter: trench warfare, industrialised slaughter, monstrous prison camps (read up about Andersonville), bringing warfare to the civilian population. Indeed it is the copycat nature of these wars that sometimes makes me think of the so-called World Wars as European Civil Wars (the extent to which the rest of the world was drawn into the conflict was, in part, because of the imperial reach of the European powers, and in part because of the coincidence that a war in the Far East was happening at the same time).
If you look at it this way. Then all the world learned from the example of the Civil War was how to wage war more terribly than it had been waged to that point.
And now, when I am starting to think that we are witnessing the first manoeuvrings in the second (or third, depending on how you count the Revolution?) American Civil War, I wonder what the current warmongers have learned from their European predecessors. And I do not feel optimistic.
Let’s face it, Trump and his cohorts seem to have taken Hannah Arendt’s warning about the rise of totalitarianism as a how-to guide. Which makes me think they are incapable of seeing “lessons from history” as the warning most of us think of, but are rather taking it as a pattern to follow. Meanwhile the rest of the world watches what is happening and thinks to itself: I know where this is going, I know how this works out. And their inevitable reaction is: leave me out of this, I don’t want any part of it, I’m not going to touch this with a bargepole. So do not look anywhere outside America for intervention, on either side. They will play it safe until it is well past the point when it is safe to do so, so any intervention is going to be tentative, half-hearted, and not followed through.
I watch what Trump is doing, I listen to what he is saying, and I wonder: has any peace party ever actually prevented war? Has calling out lies ever actually changed the minds of the deceived? Has democracy ever peacefully seized power when the anti-democrats control the reins of state? Help me out here: I can’t think of encouraging examples.
I suspect we can only look forward to more deaths, more cruelty, more damage. Maybe I am just being pessimistic, but when Stein called the USA the oldest nation on earth, did she in fact imply it is now in its dotage?
If you look at it this way. Then all the world learned from the example of the Civil War was how to wage war more terribly than it had been waged to that point.
And now, when I am starting to think that we are witnessing the first manoeuvrings in the second (or third, depending on how you count the Revolution?) American Civil War, I wonder what the current warmongers have learned from their European predecessors. And I do not feel optimistic.
Let’s face it, Trump and his cohorts seem to have taken Hannah Arendt’s warning about the rise of totalitarianism as a how-to guide. Which makes me think they are incapable of seeing “lessons from history” as the warning most of us think of, but are rather taking it as a pattern to follow. Meanwhile the rest of the world watches what is happening and thinks to itself: I know where this is going, I know how this works out. And their inevitable reaction is: leave me out of this, I don’t want any part of it, I’m not going to touch this with a bargepole. So do not look anywhere outside America for intervention, on either side. They will play it safe until it is well past the point when it is safe to do so, so any intervention is going to be tentative, half-hearted, and not followed through.
I watch what Trump is doing, I listen to what he is saying, and I wonder: has any peace party ever actually prevented war? Has calling out lies ever actually changed the minds of the deceived? Has democracy ever peacefully seized power when the anti-democrats control the reins of state? Help me out here: I can’t think of encouraging examples.
I suspect we can only look forward to more deaths, more cruelty, more damage. Maybe I am just being pessimistic, but when Stein called the USA the oldest nation on earth, did she in fact imply it is now in its dotage?
