The outbreak of a new conflict becomes its own reality television show.
September 24, 2014 |
“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,” wrote Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory. “ No one old enough to remember Dick Cheney’s “we will be greeted as liberators” needs to be reminded of this truism, but as the odds for a region-wide war rise, and as the war on terror now enters its Syria phase, either we somehow forget the horrors of miscalculations past, or even more worryingly, we long for the perverse theater of war because it’s “the force that gives us meaning.”
For the past six years, and facing its biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, the political class has failed to come together on a single issue that threatens the well-being of everyday Americans. From extending unemployment benefits to funding veteran’s benefits; from raising the minimum wage to reforming immigration, Republicans have proactively blocked every Democratic initiative to deal earnestly with the nation’s ills.
Partisan gridlock has completely paralyzed Washington, with one notable exception: war. Numerous polls show that America is as politically polarized today as it was on the eve of the Civil War. It’s not only that Democrats and Republicans are often unable to find common ground; it’s also that the parties rarely attain unity within. While it takes the issue of abortion to unify the GOP, it takes the execution of war to bring about bipartisan consensus.
Congress was unable to find $6 billion to extend unemployment insurance for the millions of Americans who through no fault of their own find themselves on the precipice of economic disaster. Nor was it able to find the few billion necessary to keep all of the 21 million Americans dependent on food stamps sustained. But whenever the drums of war are banged, no dollar amount for military spending is too high.
There’s reason cable news networks carry 24/7 coverage of the war on ISIS: war cuts across political division, brings Americans together and network executives know we are addicted to war’s intoxicating imagery. Television makes each new military engagement feels like the first wave of a new drug.
“The eruption of conflict instantly reduces the headache and trivia of daily life. The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents or alienation and dislocation. War, in times of malaise and desperation, is a potent distraction,” writes Chris Hedges, author of War: The Force that Gives Us Meaning.
War extracts meaning out of life. In a complex world, it provides a simple answer to the question of how to deal with bad things happening in the world. It extols our own virtue, celebrates our ideals and culture, while silencing the voices of those who may have legitimate reasons to hate us. “When our own nation is at war with any other, we detest them under the character of cruel, perfidious, unjust and violent: But always esteems ourselves and allies equitable, moderate, and merciful,” wrote David Hume in his 1740 classic A Treatise of Human Nature.
War creates the delusion of a binary black-and-white world. Good versus evil, us versus them, the righteous against the damned. And most of all, it interrupts the tedium of life with spectacular entertainment. “The collective glorification permits people to abandon their usual preoccupation with the petty concerns of daily life,” Hedges writes. “Life in wartime becomes theater. All are actors. Leaders, against the backdrop of war, look heroic, noble. Pilots who bail out of planes shot down by the enemy and who make their way back home play cameo roles. The state, as we saw in the Persian Gulf War or Afghanistan, transforms war into a nightly television show.”
Our collective lust for war trumps the reasons for it. There is a reason for every war and a war for every reason. On Monday night, the U.S. launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria for the first time, thus providing historians with a bookmark for recording President Obama’s war on terror. Footage of ISIS training camps and infrastructure being blown to smithereens by Tomahawk missiles is almost hypnotic. We are transfixed by our own power. Our “shock and awe” makes us feel like gods.
“The way that people begin to perceive reality in the period typically preceding the outbreak of war is very seductive. I call it the 'mythic' mode of perception, as opposed to the 'sensory' mode we ordinarily use. Once mythic perception takes over, we cease to structure the world in our customary way and turn to the ways of a fairy tale or a myth. In the mythic reality we never question why evil exists; it simply is. Since the enemy is evil, we’re quite ready to starve, torture or kill them; after all, they cannot really be considered part of our own species,” writes Lawrence LeShan in The Psychology of War: Comprehending its Mystique and Madness.
The outbreak of a new war becomes its own reality television show. The media rarely or ever questions the participant’s strategy, objective, or consequences. The same military generals whose foresight and judgment were proven wrong on Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan speak in the same cheerleading tones, and the media plays the dupe as long as the ratings remain high.
After $3 trillion and 7,000 American lives already wasted in the name of defeating shadows, and with a region set alight due to our earlier military interference, one would expect the voice of the anti-war movement to be omnipotent. Other than the courageous but ultimately futile protestations of a few brave CodePink women, the voices of dissent are silenced for no one really wants an interruption to their favorite new show.
After nearly a decade of sitting idly in the wardrobe, war is suddenly fashionable again. The brutal televised murders of Western journalists have sanctified the cause. “It is the first death which infects everyone with a feeling of being threatened. It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim,” wrote novelist Elias Cannetti about the origins of the WWII.
Once the cause is sanctified, anyone who questions the cause is treated as an apostate or a traitor, which is why opponents of war are rarely heard during the thrill of the rush toward war. “We now return to our regularly scheduled program: war.”
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