When War Comes

When war comes, it will be the enemy’s fault. It always is. Your country wants peace, it has always been a peaceful country, but the enemy’s affronts have grown numerous, outsized, intolerable. He has committed actions, he has made preparations, he has stalled in negotiations. It is on all the shows and all over the web, and even the amiable anti-war commentators seem to have been won over. The enemy has revealed himself as dangerous, implacable, insane. You simply have no choice.

Your neighbor, with whom you have been waging a desultory feud for years, suddenly takes down his yard sign promoting a candidate you despise. You think for a bit, then take down your yard sign promoting the candidate he loathes. One afternoon the two of you meet at the fence-line and have a surprisingly cordial, animated conversation about the worrisome state of things. You look him in the eye and realize that you both want exactly the same thing: to crush the enemy, to grind his face into the dust. To hear the laments of his children and wives around his funeral pyre. This moment of fellowship will feel better than you could ever have expected. We are off to war. In the cool air is a tang of brotherhood and vigor and bracing adventure.

Years later, those who are left will realize what was really happening. Your Maximum Leader had felt his grasp of power slipping, and this was the way to regain control. To deflect the anger over countless unkept promises and repeated lies. But his escape was temporary. He was burned in effigy many times before he was burned for real, in a public ceremony whose memory now shames everyone. In the cemeteries everywhere are many new headstones.