World Peace for Dummies

when will they ever learn?

Photo by Bart Ros on Unsplash

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - “Slaughterhouse-Five”.

I DOUBT anyone subscribes to The Dialectic for the latest political commentary: there are a lot of political pundits here on Substack and they’re all a lot cleverer than your devoted scribe. Politics, however, are always on the agenda, so today I thought I might address the current mess and how we made it.

I would write about politics more often, but when I turn my mind to it, I end up with my head in my hands, staring down at the keyboard, whining, “Where do I start?!” so I shelve it and write about something nice instead. But sometimes you’ve got to grapple with the serious stuff, give your two-penn’orth and listen to everyone else’s. Haven’t you? You never know, someone might come up with a bright idea that gets us out of this perpetual nightmare.

Let’s start with the broad view. I won’t beat about the bush: how close do you think we are to total annihilation at the moment? Watching the news for five random minutes within a twenty-four hour period you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s already happened. Gaza, Ukraine, Syria; bombs and firearms in the hands of the disaffected and the insane ending thousands of innocent lives every day. The fact that we still have a planet on which to witness this hellscape seems moot. As a teenager in the 1980s I felt the same anxiety, and it depresses me to think that having lived through a further four decades, I find that the needle has barely moved. Occasionally, ground may be gained when peace is restored in some small corner of the world, but it is usually lost again. It’s certainly not enough to halt the net rate of deterioration.