It’s important you know the various types of “wahr” this can turn into.
America was involved in all sorts of wars after our Revolution of 1775-1782, which secured our freedom.
Just 30 years later there was the War of 1812 (when England invaded us); the Mexican War in 1846, (when we invaded Mexico); the Civil War, 1860-1865, (when we fought among ourselves over our one great collective sin). There were also our many Indian wars in the East (from 1609-1842) and in the West (from 1811 to roughly 1890), all over territory; the Spanish-American War, 1898 (when we invoked our Monroe Doctrine to kick European colonials out of Cuba); World War I, 1918 (fought in France, just to “mind other people’s business”, but still killing over 100 thousand of our soldiers in just four months); World War II, 1942-1945 (fought all over the world…but for a necessary and just cause); then the Korean War, 1950-1953 (on behalf of the newly-founded new world order, NATO, to stop Communist aggression); the Vietnam War, 1964-1973 (also to thwart the spread of Communism..but they out-waited us, our people getting tired of it, their people having no say)…all these wars covering seven generations of history.
Then, in Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z lifetimes since 2000, there have been three or four more wars (more than one, but hard to count) under two presidents, in Afghanistan and Iraq, stemming from the 9/11 airliner suicide attacks on sites in New York City and Washington plus a failed airliner target ending in a crash in a field in Pennsylvania, taking all aboard. (We still have troops deployed there, having only bugged out of Afghanistan a few months ago.)
That 9/11 attack was our modern-day “Pearl Harbor” with three generations alive today who saw it in real time at a time in their lives, just as my father did in World War II, my uncles did in Korea, and I did with Vietnam and the Cold War, only without much of its meaning sinking in…unless they actually volunteered to go fight it themselves.
Since wars have gotten very much smaller since Vietnam (a Good Thing) those who fought these more recent wars, and their families, are generally unappreciated to the vast majority of their generations, their sacrifices unknown, and their purpose and importance barely relevant to the larger portion of Americans (not such a Good Thing).
It’s that collective complacency and indifference (much of it by design) that has brought us to this place and time. And we now find ourselves in a situation where we may have to go all the way back to “1776” and do it over again…hence the modern attempt to criminalize the term “insurrection”, which is exactly what 1776 was. But so was 1860, which conflated “states rights” and “slavery” with “liberty”, just not for all, thereby turning “insurrection” into a crime in 1868. So, with that term redefined a century-and-a-half later by lawyers who were largely still in knee-pants on 9/11, you can see how easy it is to stage-manage this new history; from the Russia-collusion hoax to the January 6th Capitol events, all with the aid of a complicit press.
So, it’s 1776 all over again.
To understand our past history in the context of how a new wahr may shape up in the very-near future, we have to consider first this “law of generations”, for there are four generations(4) involved here, and each of them have seen America differently…in part because of the way the American family has changed, but also how the popular culture has changed, how information-sharing and media has changed, how educating children has changed, and even how the way we all see reality differently.
The Good News is that what I have observed since 2010, especially since 2015-2016, are all those things that bound us together from the 1776 beginning, still remain. Just in smaller doses. Good still outweighs Evil, even though it may take a few years longer for it to dawn on some modern-day children. And Right still overrules Wrong for Nature is immovable in how it punished wrong-doing, although Nature can take up to several centuries to right that Wrong. Still, today the people who make it to adulthood by actually working to get there have retained a deep, almost instinctively love America, and still desire to protect it.
So, what we need to consider most then is that our greatest enemy is from within our basic social and educational institutions, our own national soul.
Our greatest Enemy is no longer foreign. Unlike 1776.
Still, in all these things Nature plays its role, for it dishes out rewards and punishments based on how well societies understands its laws. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who was executed by the Nazis just before his prison camp was liberated in 1945, explained it this way:
Bonhoeffer said that stupidity is the far greater dangerous tool of Evil than hate.
I point this out to highlight the notion that always in Nature, every Truth has a countervailing “truth” standing opposite it, and whether the contest is 99 against 1, or 51 against 49, there is always this war between Truth and UnTruth going on.
In 1782 that ratio was closer to 70-30, and the losing 30%, called Tories then, chose to pack and move away, mostly to Canada and England. The winning Americans weren’t their “type” anyway. They couldn’t stand the idea of living where they weren’t the Boss.
Believe it or not, when measured by economic class, that 70-30 number hasn’t changed all that much in 240 years. And while the 30% has become more spoiled, petulant, shrill and violent…and stupid… what has changed more greatly has been what the other 70% think most highly about our country. Our religious holidays are celebrated by a smaller portion and our national holidays, such as Memorial Day and 4th of July, simply signify a four-day weekend and a chance to escape to the country or beach with a case of beer and a grill.
So, understanding the generations is important because “wahr” as Americans had known it at least from the Civil War through Vietnam has been reduced to a series of disconnected 20-second bytes; being cancelled, being doxxed, and watching unrelenting foul-mouthed public displays, destruction of private and public property without punishment or even restraint, as many large stores’ employees simply stand aside to allow pillagers to clean their inventories, without fear of arrest.
If America were beset with a real war on its shores, a full third to half of the modern generation will either never know anything about it unless it totally disrupts their personal space, or they will simply deny it actually exists.
So, it’s time to be reminded about the basic elements of Wahr.
We’ll begin with modern versions of “occupation”. Stay tuned.
