The TMI War

 

This war in Iran will be a way different experience for those watching at home. This would be the first major American conflict where the other country’s civilian population has smartphones. We are going to see things that Trump doesn’t want us to see, the Ayatollah doesn’t want us to see, and that we don’t want to see. If you are already opposed to this war, it’s okay to take a mental health break from the Internet. There will be violent images that will trickle past any filters that Zuck and Musk can put up.

A lot of people aren’t going to be ready for what they are about to see. I’m used to seeing gory pictures from EMT classes, and I still might not be ready. We might get HD quality images of atrocities in our timelines. You might want an image blocker extension for your browser if you have to use the Internet after the next ground invasion.

Still, many people will look at their phones and see pictures and videos of dead and dying soldiers and civilians. Trump will not be able to hide how hideous war is, and he never had any idea of the hideousness that he himself hid from. (He was right to hide from the Vietnam War, his participation would have served no purpose.)

We might reach a point where too much information about war makes it politically unthinkable. This will bother the kind of man who thinks of war as being good for a society. The kind of man who insists that “hard times create strong men; strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” As to prove their point, they elected the softest man ever to stand behind a podium and went on to create the hardest of times in the post Cold War era. Do they propose to break the cycle by ending prosperity forever to ensure that every generation of men will be hard?

Some of us have spent the past four years watching what Ukrainian drones can do to Russian soldiers and vehicles. No leader will be able to start a war again unless he’s willing to let his voters watch that happen to his soldiers. Maybe that will be what creates a new cycle of peace.