“They wasted our lives like pieces of scrap paper.”
“Never die for Emperor or country.”
– Mr. Sato, Japanese soldier during WWII
The people that fought and died during World War II are all mostly dead now. A few hang on, 80 years later, but there are not many today who are willing to hear their advice. Our modern world is slowly inching back toward the same impulses that lead to the horrors of the 20th century. Some countries, like Russia and Israel, have already succumbed and wage war with abandon. America is happy to watch and supply weapons, as we did 80 years ago before the violence finally found its way back to our shores and forced Americans to fight and die too. The folks that remember how awful the 1940s were are warning us about what is coming, but we don’t listen!
Joe Rogan has a horrifying prophecy that I hear bandied about these days:
“Hard times make hard men.
Hard men make easy times.
Easy times make soft men.
Soft men make hard times.”
The soft men don’t realize how good they have it. They don’t see their softness as a virtue. They want to be hard so bad that they’ll trade blood for it.
How long until the whole world is engulfed again? Why do we try so hard to justify conquest? Having a little piece of land cannot possibly be worth the death of an entire generation!
