This is something of a challenge, as my Scots Irish blood tends more towards the "fight" side of the fight or flight equation. I feel the urge, fiercely and viscerally. But I can also say this: in fifty six years of life, I have never struck another person. War, which never changes, is a horror, an endless swirl of blood pointlessly circling the drain of history.
For my lifetime, the United States of America has stood as the militarily dominant world superpower. Even though the Constitution of the United States does not assume the presence of a standing army, what Eisenhower described as the military industrial complex has become a defining feature of our national identity. We have been in a forever war for much of the last century, projecting our power in ways that often haven't seemed particularly small-R republican.
In the face of this, there have always been idealistic Americans who have called for disarmament. We must make peace. We must stand down, set down the sword, demilitarize, so that we can buy the world a [oatmilk vegan smoothie] and sing in perfect harmony.
Which is all well and good, with a single rather notable flaw. Calling for American disarmament doesn't solve the problem of war, because...well...there are actually other countries out there. Americans often forget this.
The authoritarian regimes we've stood in both hot and cold running war with haven't been pure as the driven snow. The Soviet Union wasn't a place where art and literature thrived, or where peaceful dissent was tolerated. Today, post-Soviet Russia is more Tzarist than it is communist, the sort of place where those who oppose the regime are imprisoned. Or disappear, or are poisoned, or fall out of fifth-floor windows.
Those militaristic regimes have always strongly encouraged and covertly supported peace movements in the republics that opposed them. They've fomented deep and radical cynicism about the integrity of democratic states, which are all "imperialist" and "decadent." The goal of those malicious actors is to create a cadre of полезные дураки, the "useful fools" who...driven by a desire for "peace and justice"....ultimately only serve the ends of tyrants.
That was always a reality in the 20th century, and now that social media allows troll farms to cosplay as activists, useful idiocy runs rampant. Driven by the reactive immediacy of the medium, those who earnestly seek peace and justice leap from one dangled shiny object to another, endlessly outraged and overwhelmed. Is the thing you're enraged by right now a real thing, or a bit of cynical agitprop dropped into your feed by the cynically masked agent of an oppressive regime? Does that meme come from Iran or China? Does that
The goal, I think, is not to serve any tyrant or despot. Instead, be totally and completely useless.
So sure, call for disarmament. Call for an end to war. Live out that ethic. But make that demand universal. Call out the military industrial complex, while at the same time explicitly naming Russian aggression and Chinese repression. You can simultaneously observe Israel's relentless regional truculence and the violence fomented by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
If you watch the Black Block brawling with Proud Boys and pick a side, you're not committed to nonviolence.
Refuse to tolerate or excuse violence and hatred by anyone, anywhere, for any reason.
Be a fool and a stumbling block to every despot, everywhere.
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