One of the themes I have been considering is the necessity for war. But more importantly is the very accomplishment of war. It has been a while since I began entertaining the idea. At this point I trace it back to the days when I first started thinking about Patton.
It is a popular idea, which may or may not be owned by the Left, that war is essentially stupidity writ large. That the act of war represents a failure of intellect - an inability to think through problems. Note the use of the term 'resort to violence' as a way of achieving one's ends. The kneejerk ethos would suggest that 'violence as a last resort' is the thoughtful way forward. But none of that really scales to war. Making war is an enterprise that requires a great deal of thought.
As one of those permanent institutions in the history of civilized mankind, the standing army is the beneficiary of generation upon generation of wisdom. And as such it is appropriate to think of those generals and military officers as the beneficiaries of said wisdom. They may or may not learn well, but as a class of men who are expected to lead tens of thousands of men during the regular course of their careers, sometimes to death, quite a bit depends on them. Most certainly central to the authority vested in military officers is the fact that civilization turns on their actions. The ability to wage war is the greatest fortune a people possess, for it is the manner in which they preserve their very lives, when their lives themselves are threatened.
I am studying the means of war because at this moment in American history the study of economics is fruitless. Nobody knows what to do with a surfeit of unemployed, educated, literate people but make them EGBOK promises. So what if that fails and we depose the promisers? We might very well suffer a coup of the sort Iran has suffered and what would all those angry people do? Who knows, but even if they were to 'resort to violence' that would be a trifle compared to the the business of waging war. You cannot spontaneously generate a fighting army. You cannot transform rage into battlefield victory.
If one is to take Machiavelli seriously in taking politics for non-violent war, then business is perhaps, some fraction of politics. Surely the power of law outweighs the power of money in this world. An economy is a well-managed game and those who cheat or lose are rarely shot. The stakes simply aren't so high. And so all those who might think that the global corporation is some new sort of superpower really don't understand power. When it comes to ultimate sacrifices, rich and powerful people always end up paying for soliders. Nobody can match the organizations that print money, and even the narcotraffickers who printed cocaine were ultimately no match. Surely soldiers will fight and die for money, but more will fight and die for the honor that politics bestows.
Equally there is much to be said for religion, but I am coming to think of religion as a hedge with regard to its conspiracy in national governance. The Catholic Church does not demand that Christians defy the laws of men. Men fear jail more than excommunication. That is the way of the world today, except obviously in areas that are unpoliced.
My point is that the greatest projects of mankind still do inevitably involved armed conflict, and when people starve that is what results. Feeding an army will always be possible and humans will not 'civilize' themselves past that. All the greatest mistakes end in war, it is how we solve ultimate problems. We will fight until we are exhausted of fighting, and the man who leads the most and smartest of his tribe to victory at war is by definition the greatest man.
The difficulty in understanding this fundamental principle I place at the feet of a sort of false ethics. It is literally the power of a hegemonic understanding which is the same thing as mass hysteria or a successful grand conspiracy. Only people leveraged by a system whose roughneck roots they are completely isolated from can develop a worldview that defies the acknowledgment of war as the ultimate solution. Only people who circumscribed or extremely disciplined to live in a fraction of their humanity do not know.
So I measure things in terms of cost of life. I measure things in terms of loyalty unto death. I judge achievements by the willingness of those who oppose it to die trying. Whatever can be gotten can be gotten for a price. Every ethos that doesn't extend that to the ultimate price can and will be sold out, betrayed, undermined and refuted. When I came understand this in terms of politics, it was a revelation. It was then I wrote 'The Cost of Not' and came to recognize racial equilibrium in America.
I live in the belly of the economy of America in its upper middle class. What I have isn't really much. It was hard won for me as an individual but the slightest war wipes me away. So I am reconciled to my spoiled and recondite existence, all relativism aside. I play by the rules of the inner circle privileges, but I never forget the outer boundaries - the human ultimate that lies outside.
Never forget that you can be punched in the nose. So don't be so proud of things you have that you didn't have to punch for.
