Remember that war we talked about in February and March?
In two days, there’s a time change. After two more, a consequential and particularly ugly US election. And yet, here we are again, talking about war. Only this time, it’s not just me.
On February 27 and March 5 of this year, we published two consecutive articles about the inevitable war that will start within the next six years. Unfortunately for all of us, that timetable may be on the optimistic side.
Last month, Michael Smerconish of CNN quoted a September 16, 2024 article from Walter Russell Mead of the Wall Street Journal (which is paywalled), entitled “U.S. Shrugs as World War III Approaches.”
Mead reported that the bipartisan Commission of the National Defense Strategy warned that while Americans have been bombarded with election era messages and fear bombs from the two candidates — lies about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs (the lesson: brown people bad) to bomb threats that emanated from that lie to whether a brilliant, scholarly, tough on crime, quick, prosecutorial Black and South Asian woman with a stable family and love of country can beat a 34-time convicted felon, convicted fraud, convicted sex offender, tax cheat, irrational, old White guy who cheated on his wives so many times that counterfeit Christian evangelists pray to god for him to win (again, the lesson: brown people bad) — there is a war in Eastern Europe, half of Africa and South America, the Middle East, and right-wing radical racists and Nazis are becoming popular once again in Western Europe.
Neither the United States, North Korea, nor China is shown in the map above as participating in a war right now. That doesn’t mean that they’re not participating in other people’s wars. Also, in the US, we have our own issues: over 40,000 gun murders per year is one of them (almost 43,000 in 2023). We don’t have to be in a war to kill our own people. Seems as though we do a pretty good job of it on our own.
But back to Mead:
“The bipartisan report details a devastating picture of political failure, strategic inadequacy, and growing American weakness in a time of rapidly increasing danger. The U.S. faces the ‘most serious and most challenging’ threats since 1945, including the real risk of ‘near-term major war.’ The report warns: ‘The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.’”
And as we wrote back in February, anticipating a war by 2030:
“Nothing is really as unprecedented as the media or your conspiracy theorist brother-in-law would have you believe. If you’re in the nonprofit arts business and think the art you produce is not subject to these cycles, think again. All signs point to war. Everything that has led up to every ‘war to end all wars’ is happening right now. Worldwide populism movements choosing narcissistic, autocratic leadership. Eliminating democratic principles in lieu of safety. Choosing up sides. Mistrust of elections. Hatred of government. Groups determining who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them.’ Fear, peddled 24 hours a day on various media, both legitimate and phony. The belief in lies and ‘truthiness.’ All this has happened before – just before all-out war. We’re due, sometime between now and 2030.”
I had hoped that I was wrong. Others just believed I had gone off the deep end. A couple of arts leaders who don’t agree with our assessment that most of the nonprofit arts industry in the United States fails to live up to its responsibility as charitable — and because of that active repugnance toward their communities, organizations have seen their financial resources dwindle — argued that talking about a war was ludicrous.
At what point does a responsible arts leader turn their head away from what is going on around the world and choose not to do anything about it? They’re already turning their head away from what is going on in their own backyard, after all.
What sacrifices will you make when the war includes your own country directly? Given that you’ve likely never been asked to sacrifice anything for the sake of your art, what’s your plan? What do you mean, you don’t have a plan?
What are you going to do? Hide in plain sight?
Don’t get me wrong: no one is going to ask you to personally end the war. That’s overwhelming. It’s so overwhelming, in fact, that the combined forces of the world won’t stop it from coming. So what’s a lowly arts organization, one that has already proven unworthy of funding because it lacks the ability to follow the guidelines of the IRS in producing charitable activities, supposed to do when all attention (and money) will be devoted elsewhere?
As stated in previous columns, there is not one arts leader in America alive that was also leading an arts organization — community or commercial — during the last World War. There are stories and learned history about how the people sacrificed and worked together across party lines to help the war effort. For that selflessness, they were dubbed The Greatest Generation.
Don’t forget that before the war, this same generation survived a years-long depression in which regular families had already learned to sacrifice for each other while the ultra-wealthy became richer.
But those are not the leaders we have now. The only thing we have in common with that era is that the ultra-wealthy were able to pit races and ethnicities against each other so that no one would team up to gain power over them. (The lesson, then and now: brown people bad. Jews, too.) They’re still pretty good at pitting us against each other. It serves their needs perfectly.
It’s called “triangulation.”
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There’s no easy answer. But we’re pretty sure that “nothing” is not among your choices.
Let’s start with the election on November 5. Americans are already voting. I’ve completed my ballot, for example, and mailed it in. I’ve tracked it online and it has arrived. But I live in Washington, which, like Oregon, has 100% mail-in voting. With no problems and high turnout, incidentally. Where do you live? And will any of it matter to you after the election? Or will you just get ready for whatever Christmas show you have scheduled with your fingers in your ears and your community in need?
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la.
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