Life In Wartime (Part II): The View From The Trenches
It was the kind of war we didn't know we were fighting until we found ourselves being shot at. I had good people like the Argonaut and Gnomus with me, or I wouldn't have survived as long as I did, which is to say not very long, but long enough.
Looking back is an interesting experience. It has parallels with an earlier war into which I was born. JFK had just died, and hope seemed distant. 'Global thermonuclear war' was entering the consciousness and the vocabulary of the world.
In this newer war, the phrase 'holistic education' had much the same effect — it was something that everybody was preparing for, that nobody had experienced, and that anybody could define in the knowledge that you could weasel out of it in time for tea. The fact now, as it was then, is that the idea was a chimera designed to frighten children into thinking about obeying the authorities for their own benefit.
And in this war, as in that one, everyone talked about trenches — but nobody actually lived in one. Rather, people built elaborate bunkers, sometimes decorated with stone eagles, and worked long hours under artificial lighting in the depths of fortified hills. From those 'trenches', we saw the creeping entanglement of information that was designed to hold people up rather than set them free — a modern kind of virtual barbed wire. We also saw the machine guns, firing bullets of platitudes and meaninglessness from the stage-managed pill-boxes of administrative power.
But to the patriots and rebels alike, a lot of it was very real. Real blood was shed, real lives were lost (although some were found again). The people in the cities saw none of it. Those of us in the metaphorical trenches saw too much of it. We saw people shelled and blown to pieces. You would be struggling against the forces of ignorance with a colleague at your side, and then that person would suddenly not be there anymore.
Meanwhile, as you desperately tried to protect your flank, the stormtroopers would be breaking down doors and taking down names, intimidating the friends of the missing person, and making sure the political indoctrination held firm. They would read your mail, summon you arbitrarily for meetings, ask you questions which seemed meaningless and which you could not possibly answer. It was as if the Grand Endeavour was just another façade for the Great Game.
And so it was. Those who were most incompetent in battle turned their eyes to competency in backstabbing their own people and sucking up to the powers upon the throne. The people in the comfortable cities saw none of this either. To them, as long as the air-conditioning kept coming and the astroturf was pristine, none of it was their business at all.
That is why, when the war came to an end, most of them manifested serious problems of denial. But that's another story.
Looking back is an interesting experience. It has parallels with an earlier war into which I was born. JFK had just died, and hope seemed distant. 'Global thermonuclear war' was entering the consciousness and the vocabulary of the world.
In this newer war, the phrase 'holistic education' had much the same effect — it was something that everybody was preparing for, that nobody had experienced, and that anybody could define in the knowledge that you could weasel out of it in time for tea. The fact now, as it was then, is that the idea was a chimera designed to frighten children into thinking about obeying the authorities for their own benefit.
And in this war, as in that one, everyone talked about trenches — but nobody actually lived in one. Rather, people built elaborate bunkers, sometimes decorated with stone eagles, and worked long hours under artificial lighting in the depths of fortified hills. From those 'trenches', we saw the creeping entanglement of information that was designed to hold people up rather than set them free — a modern kind of virtual barbed wire. We also saw the machine guns, firing bullets of platitudes and meaninglessness from the stage-managed pill-boxes of administrative power.
But to the patriots and rebels alike, a lot of it was very real. Real blood was shed, real lives were lost (although some were found again). The people in the cities saw none of it. Those of us in the metaphorical trenches saw too much of it. We saw people shelled and blown to pieces. You would be struggling against the forces of ignorance with a colleague at your side, and then that person would suddenly not be there anymore.
Meanwhile, as you desperately tried to protect your flank, the stormtroopers would be breaking down doors and taking down names, intimidating the friends of the missing person, and making sure the political indoctrination held firm. They would read your mail, summon you arbitrarily for meetings, ask you questions which seemed meaningless and which you could not possibly answer. It was as if the Grand Endeavour was just another façade for the Great Game.
And so it was. Those who were most incompetent in battle turned their eyes to competency in backstabbing their own people and sucking up to the powers upon the throne. The people in the comfortable cities saw none of this either. To them, as long as the air-conditioning kept coming and the astroturf was pristine, none of it was their business at all.
That is why, when the war came to an end, most of them manifested serious problems of denial. But that's another story.
Labels: Education, Historical Fiction
etched with acid at 8:55:00 am
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