Bullets. Bombs. Bravado.
"Latent structure rules obvious structure." - Heraclitus.
In thinking about this world and why things happen as they do, I prefer to keep it simple.
I’ve been listening to all the pundits, retired generals, knowitnothings and speakeasys, go on and on about Ukraine, about which they know nothing. And further about Putin, about who they know even less. It’s annoying.
I simple want to offer the following.
Remember when you were a kid? Did your parents leave guns, poisons, medication, flammable items just lying around - for you to try out and use? No.
Meaning, we have war because we have so many god damn things that make war possible, lying about. And if it is there, if it exists and in reach - I know human nature - we’ll use it.
So I propose we start asking the REAL question. Where do all these millions of bullets and bombs and devices to kill and eradicate fragile humans come from? Find that out. Then eliminate them from our grasp. Without recourse to them - I bet Ukraine and Russia would be settling things through a wrestling match or even better, a chess match.
For anyone interested in the real story of our recent history - Chalmers Johnson would be a start. All imperialism rests on militarism, the aggressive use of killing others. Wars become just a means to profit and a way to reload.
I wrote this poem over 40 years ago. My early days. Had a vague memory of it and searched for a few hours and finally found it, in a neglected notebook. I leave it here in support of my argument.
From Where?
From where do all the guns come?
Do they fall from the sky
magically
as the peasants beat the ground
with sticks in sympathy?
Do they rise from the soil
omnipotent corn stocks
fed by the graves
of their glorious, immobile comrades?
Do they wash up on shore
Fire breathing notched driftwood,
gifts from a leviathan
born of wide-eyed prophecy?
From where does the ammunition come?
Does it rain down as if hail,
killing a few, so others
may kill a few more?
Do these bullets spit from
the mouths of dictators,
white as mints,
fresh and deadly as ideology?
Do they grow in the spring
on hillsides like strawberries,
picked green
soon to turn red?
From where do these
ragged, hopeful, smiling people
get these
shiny, smooth, godless things
I say,
instruments of destruction are a luxury —-
of those with little better to do.
They grow from the fat of the earth, the minds
of those that don’t till it
of those least likely to taste the red wrath
of man’s reach for perfection.
I'm very fortunate about not living in China or worse, North Korea (i had to be a soldier for many years if i lived in any of the mentioned countries). And despite not being directly participating in a war fighting for my country, my parents vividly remember when Iraq attacked Iran many years (i was born three years after the war ended). War, in my opinion, should be the last resort and it's the most inhumane way to stop a country from doing sth.