Thursday, March 12, 2026
PMT: A nation at war
IPLawGuy and I have been off in Colorado for our annual ski trip, which was a great adventure (and no one got hurt!). We had blue skies and just enough snow to make it worthwhile.
But, unless I hunted down a news site, there was no way to know we are a nation at war, relentlessly bombing military and civilian targets and killing hundreds of people while the world economy is destabilized by a new oil crisis. No one (except us) seemed to be talking about it, and if you saw a television it was always playing sports.
Of course, there is a reality beneath all of this avoidance: the war doesn't affect most of us at all, except through higher gas prices. Most people don't have a kid in the military, or family in that region where the war (prinicipally in Iran and Lebanon) is destroying homes and schools, or any direct financial or emotional stake in the conflict.
And that seems to be a recipe for tragedy, that one nation can so casually wreak havoc in a whole region with little cost to itself (at least in this moment). It makes war seem easy, which must be alluring to those who have the ability to start them.
Or do we care this time?
