Trump and World War III

 Among the unhelpful, panic-mongering posts going around social media about how the regime will cancel the midterm elections, I caught one this morning about how Kristallnacht backfired on the Nazi regime because its public violence caught the citizens off guard. They didn't suddenly grow sympathetic to their Jewish fellow citizens. They just objected to the open brutality and widespread property damage. That is rather reminiscent of the right wing and "moderates" in this country, true. However, the post goes on to say that Hitler forced the "volk" to get back in line to support the regime when he launched World War II. Then it warns us that the current occupant of the Oval Office would not hesitate to start World War III to achieve the same kind of forced unity.

The dictator might fantasize that he could do something that Hitlerish, but several things conspire against him, or anyone similarly motivated.

As bad as the world is right now, it remains inoculated against true world war by the existence of doomsday weapons. It takes more than one country to play World War. In the 1930s, military hardware had advanced beyond what made World War I such a shocking slaughter and generational trauma, but you still had to go out in person to deliver your devastation. You had to drive there, march there, sail there, fly there. Germany eventually did develop early missile technology, but it remained pretty random right through the end of the conflict. At the start of the war, you just rolled out and faced whatever opposing forces rolled from their side to meet you.

The first world war was the result of unfortunate treaties and an outmoded sense of what warfare actually involved. Once it had started, it was hard to stop. Territory and resources were in play that would set the stage for the rest of the century.

The second world war was a result of the bungling of the aftermath of the first. But it might have happened anyway, because macho posturing was in vogue, and evolving weapon technology made global conquest look doable.

If the current dictator wanted to start a world war, it would be a nuclear war. I want to believe that our military would mutiny at that point rather than roll the dice on a limited nuclear exchange. Anyone who agreed to try that would have to be suicidal. It remains a possibility because of the number of miserable bastards who would commit murder-suicide. Look at the number of family annihilations in which a depressed individual, usually a man, takes out his domestic partner and their offspring before ending his own life. On a global political scale, look at the the kind of people who commit suicide attacks. Through history, they're not exclusively brown people from desert countries. All it would take is the perfect concentration of suicidal zealots who are willing to destroy humanity if they can't boss it around on their terms. Gather them, induct them into the military, and promote and assign them to get your cadre of murder-suicide soldiers at the controls of the nuclear arsenal. Fire one missile and see what happens. It makes a good movie plot, but is much harder to put together in the real world.

If you think that an attack by conventional forces, on Greenland, for instance, would do the trick, I call your attention to World War V -- the Vietnam War -- which was so divisive and unpopular that it set the stage for much of the strife that divides the nation today. By the 1990s we were ready to "give war a chance," as the gleeful militarists said at the time, but then the years of inconclusive bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq reminded us of why it wasn't so great after all.

The only people with any enthusiasm for war at this point are the chickenhawks who never put themselves in harm's way. This regime has a pretty high concentration of them, but the people who would have to execute the orders have been trained in more than just TV tough guy bullshit. The TV tough guy currently cosplaying as Secretary of Defense does have military experience, but not a service academy education. His on-again-off-again military career is not the same as the lifelong commitment of a truly senior military officer. He's well marinaded, but not seasoned.

And what if the dictator did start World War III? You and I can't do anything about that. The minority party in Congress can't do anything about that. Any move by military leaders to do anything about it would risk court martial and possibly execution. They might do it, because unswerving obedience isn't a good look when the survival of the human species is on the line. Keep hoping. Getting worried about it, even getting terrified about it, does you absolutely no good. Your "bug-out bag" and escape plans couldn't get you far enough to avoid the fallout -- literally -- of the conflagration. Think of Nevil Shute's On the Beach. So forget about it and focus on the boring, undramatic machinery of a functioning democracy. Continue opposing the regime through the non-routine actions of nonviolent resistance, and through community cohesiveness in the event that the goons come to your town and start throwing their weight around.

The radical resistance of self extinction

 The statistics are easy to find showing that a handful of billionaires control more wealth than the bottom half of the population in the United States. Extreme wealth generates its own gravity, sucking more and more resources toward itself.

The United States owes much of its prosperity to the stolen labor of slaves. When official slavery was ended, powerful men in the former Confederacy made sure that the Black population would remain subjugated. By the end of the 19th Century, powerful business interests built immense fortunes by suppressing labor -- creating a virtual slave economy -- until reformers in the government heeded the uprisings and broke the power of corporate consolidation and collusion.

Big business kept trying, and had flourished again by the 1920s, setting up economic collapse. A few rich tumbled, but the solid fortunes survived. Let the common folk bear the brunt of the decisions and follies of the powerful. It has been that way throughout history. Power accretes, life is cheap, and you're a slacker and a coward if you don't play along.

While humanity plays out its endless power struggles, we trash the environment. We keep discovering that we removed some key piece that we thought was not important in our haste.

At the moment, we are developing technology that allows the wealthy to keep tabs on us and suppress us better than ever. Any government that we instituted to keep them in check would use the same technology to protect itself. It might be okay as long as the government was staffed by people who would not abuse that power. What are the odds?

The future seems to hold a couple of unpalatable probabilities: the majority of us end up grubbing for sustenance in a global economy run by a few for the benefit of a few, and we end up in constant losing battles with the armed forces and law enforcement of the regime in perpetuity.

We can "vote with our wallets" all we want, boycotting this or that visible head of the multi-headed mega-corporations, but we're just an inconvenience for a single division or two. The major money machine thrives. We can elect progressive champions who will vote for the things that would truly improve our lot in all respects, but they will have to deal politically with the well-funded representatives of the corporatocracy.

Thinking about a real shootin' revolution? Your odds are terrible, given the global reach and vested interest of the wealthy. Forget whether you would win. The war itself would reduce the planet to a smoldering rock. This is not hyperbole based on the power of nuclear weapons. It's a mere fact about war: it pollutes and destroys without restraint. Lots of things will get blown up. Both sides are fighting for their lives with nothing to lose.

I hate to be a downer, but any future generations you produce now will be slave labor or doomed cannon fodder. But it doesn't have to be grim and sad. You've just freed up a lot of disposable income as well as relieving yourself of a moral burden. You don't have to leave, just because you have refused to give the wealthy your children as hostages. Have fun! Eat tasty food. Listen to music. Travel.

See, here's the thing: The rich will keep breeding. They'll go on for years before they even notice that we've stopped providing cheap labor. They will produce more of their privileged offspring than the top tier can accommodate. Those kids will filter down into the lower roles. Laws will have to be rewritten to disinherit them, so that they can't rebel and take over the system that their families have maintained for generations.

The wealthy themselves, mostly not expert at anything except keeping a boot on the necks of the people who work for them, will have to develop expertise pretty quickly to keep up the automated systems they paid others to invent so that they could lay off a bunch of workers. Their utopia depends on having just the right number of underlings to keep things humming. If we all refuse to help them meet their staffing needs, they lose their comfy bubble.

Lest you think we could bring about paradise on Earth just by starving out the wealthy and collapsing civilization, remember that violent coercion was one of humanity's first innovations. It isn't going away. The only way to end it is to end us.

Naturally, this is not going to be a popular point of view. I resisted it for decades. Lots of people will continue to feed the voracious appetite of the culture of power. I decided early on not to have children, but I held out the hope that a better future was truly -- though remotely -- possible. However, as years have passed and technology has evolved, life has gotten simultaneously more comfortable for the privileged and more tenuous for the vast majority of us. Many of us down here in the disposable masses enjoy comforts and conveniences that did not exist 20, 30, 50 years ago. My view of a nice world to live in was shaped by childhood observations in the 1960s and '70s. In many ways it has not changed. But generations that followed have completely different baselines and perceptions, and they far outnumber me. I was already outvoted by my own generation in making the first steps toward that better world.

The permaculture crowd seems to have a rough idea of what I had in mind and had no name or platform for, but they're locked in battle with elements in their own age group who want to put medieval religion in charge of government and make racism great again, while driving petroleum fueled vehicles in defiance of repressive science. So what progress have we made? The former "greatest country on Earth" (USA! USA! USA!) is now lurching toward a polluting dictatorship that considers war crimes to be expressions of national might and virtue. Will those forces win? I join with those who say that they will not. But the struggle to stop them delays all other progress as we ally with disillusioned former followers of the regime who are willing to defend democracy at long last, but only so that we can go back to the same stupid arguments that were dooming us before and paved the way for the authoritarian takeover in the first place.

We will beat them. We will unseat them. But they will still be around, seeking another route to power. The struggle doesn't end. A multitude will labor in obscurity so that a minority might feel like they've made a substantial difference. We need warriors, champions, heroes to sacrifice themselves in defense of all that is great and good, but we mock their sacrifice by refusing to learn how to keep it from happening over and over.

We all do better when we all do better. But starting right now, getting the resources to help the lowermost do better means taking a big chunk out of the uppermost. Thus we aren't "all doing better." The great rebalancing may be beyond the will of the sizable percentage who will see their fortunes diminish. "What's in it for me?" will take over as the guiding principle. Take over? It never left. 

A growth mindset has driven humans for at least thousands of years. Why pay for what you can take by force? Why settle for your own little valley when you've produced more sons than your farms can feed, and they're getting restless? 

I have lived my whole life under the threat of World War III. We have avoided it so far, but the threat remains. Fans of the Star Trek universe remind us that the peaceful future of the Federation lies beyond World War III. Like human beings need to teach themselves that dumb lesson one more time, using even more modern and horrific weapons than in the second volume of the trilogy.

With so many people designing their lives around fantasy fiction, whether it's the Bible, Star Trek, DC Comics, or what have you, it's such an ingrained tradition that we have groups of believers trying to bring about specific events described in their texts as stepping stones to the good part. Ironic when it's science fiction blinding people to the open eyed, unprejudiced observations of the actual scientific method, which could show us how to get to the good part now without the firestorms and bloodbath. But no: let's use cautionary tales as an instruction manual instead. Let's get so caught up in fantasy and cosplay that we dance right into the fiery crash that no one in their right mind really wants to go through.

We have yet to produce a complete generation of offspring that say en masse, "Hey! You people are crazy! We're not doing it!" We keep breeding rival teams to fight on in perpetuity while the whole ecosystem crumbles.

Vote with your wallets. Vote with your sperm and eggs. Tell the power-mad bastards no.