It’s going to have to get worse

I’ve been doing a lot of study on the last time things changed in my country, turned around, and why. So let me take you back a hundred years

Everyone was bad at fighting World War 1. England was bad at it, so was France and even Germany. There are myread reasons behind this, mostly that European armies had more experience in the last century fighting colonial wars, that is wars to prop up their various colonies. Most of the wars of the previous century were fought at sea, but this resulted in everyone overprepping naval assets and neglecting troops and land logistics. So the first world war stagnated, such that Russia had a revolution rather than keep sending their sons to war. That had never happened before. Further, the populist rage led to the rise of the first “communist” government, and the West was really not happy about that.

Anyway the United States was just a little bit less awful at fighting, mainly because they didn’t have any land in the game. They put their thumb on the scale, and eventually reached an uneasy peace.

{Insert; people don’t tend to read my philosophic ramblings, so any edits I do are for my own edit-facation. get it? anyway, still waiting to go to sleep, have nothing to add about the sad state of my life, but I can talk about some of the horrors of the first world war.)

There weren’t any substantial lessons or benefits to come out of the war is the issue, and the cost was high. Not that most wars are helpful, more that our species is really good at rationalizing after the fact. Once all the war dead are buried, it feels dishonorable to their memory to trivialize their war. That’s just it though; the motivations, the outcomes and the process of WW1 were unbelieveably trivial. The lines between the two sides were very arbitrary, few of those fighting felt a personal need to avenge the death of Arch Duke Ferdinand.

Also; mud. Turns out that mud is one of the worst causes of death in all wars, but WW1 and mud had what you might call a special relationship. The nature of trench warfare meant there was no escaping the mud. Troops had to stand in watery muck all day, then sleep in it too. They hated the mud, almost as much as I hate our economy. Almost.

Mud side story (because to remind you, if you are reading this far you’re a fricken miracle, and I’m just trying to take my mind off the pain)

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle should be required reading. The major driving force is a hypothetical weapon developed by one of the creators of the Atom bomb. What happened was this; after his success with the bomb, this scientist was always getting visits from generals with requests for solutions to their problems. The relevant problem was that the US Army was sick of mud. When I read this as a kid, I didn’t think about it much… . but it makes too much sense now.

So this guy is kind of a scamp. He would sometimes just pitch how he might do something to get the generals to go away. He was interested in the science of it, whether it could be done and not the practicality.

So the scientist says to the general ‘suppose that ice could have different properties, based on being exposed to how different crystals connect, and a seed crystal could teach all the other water to freeze the same way. Now suppose you could create ice that freezes at 114 degrees instead of at 32. A soldier could carry a tiny amount as far as he liked, and when he found mud drop it, and the mud would freeze solid, and the army could carry on to victory’

but what about the nearby streams? all water is connected through the water table…. well they’d freeze too. And the lakes those streams feed? frozen. And the rivers and the seas and the oceans? They’d all freeze! Even the water that falls from the sky would freeze on contact. The ecosystems of the earth would collapse, and it’d be the end of the world!

and that’s what the book is about; the end of the world by that exact method. It turns out that scientist did make the substance, never told anyone, but through a bizarre series of events it met with a body of water…. and that’s all she wrote… well he, because Vonnegut identified as male.

This was following one of the greatest labor movements in the history of the species, let alone in the United States; fair wages, the 40 hour workweek, workplace safety, unions, pensions and fiscal responsibility were all newly brought into being ideas. The monopolies still had a pretty good grip on the United States, and so did the very rich. In short for a working class individual, it was quite similar to right now. They knew they could do better, but it wasn’t quite awful enough to force major societal change.

What happened then?

The great depression and World War 2, events unavoidably linked in both their causes and solutions. Both of them were caused by a reckless capital class, and a disinterested working class. Does this sound familiar? It should!

Capitalism almost died in World War 2, and you’re going to have to fight pretty hard to convince me it shouldn’t have. Germany, Italy and Japan decided they were sick of the “free market” as it existed at the time. Yes, they were all xenophobic and fascist down the line, but I don’t think we talk about why enough. The reason fascism failed back then in the United States was that the very rich were rightfully afraid of the destabilizing effect of an entire generation of the workforce getting fed up and ceasing to purchase and consume. We came delightfully close to doing just that.

So the “New Deal” was a hard fought package of reforms, and it was no more or less than the powerful felt at the time was necessary to keep together capitalist democracy.

All the stories of people working the same job for decades and retiring, of decent work conditions in bye gone days, all of these came out of the New Deal. It really succeeded in placating the working public.

Ah, but the dark side of competition. From there it was a race to the bottom. When all the people who had understood those times, knew those times, had died, people forgot about the danger of creeping tyranny. They got soft, and those with most of the assets got greedy.

The only reason. The only reason. The only reason.

The only reason there was anything approaching kindness towards working people was because the rich were terrified of the alternative.

And with time, they’ve lost that fear, and we all lost anything resembling economic security.

That’s why it has to get worse. I’m cynical by nature, but this is the darkest thing I’ve ever been reasonably certain of. Somewhere, revolutions have to happen. Maybe not here, but somewhere. Somewhere they’ve got to threaten the currently powerful. Somewhere new soldiers will need to be competent, which means there might have to be war before any of us see a way out towards kinder times.

That spark has to happen. I used to want to be it, but the fact is I was born too early. It may take decades or even centuries more, but as it appears right now, it’s going to have to get much worse. People are going to have to be much more stirred up before anything is going to change.

Dr. Suess wrote one of the best lines about this;

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to change. It’s not.”