War Department

We don't know how it will all end, but in case historians ever wonder if humans in 2025 didn't see the alarming course events were taking, the answer is that we did. How could we not see it, if it was happening during the day and right under our noses?

On Wednesday, China organized one of the largest military parades in history, with the presence of the presidents of Russia and North Korea, and then the president of the United States changed the name of the Department of Defense for the War Department, which had been the traditional name for a century and a half. "Defense is too defensive," he had said days before, coinciding with the order to send soldiers out to patrol the streets of the capital. This was the same president who had sent people to storm Congress to prevent the proclamation of his rival's electoral victory.

Yes, we saw that, just as we saw the rise of parties with hate speech, the EU advising us to have a survival kit ready, the German chancellor justifying that his country should have the largest army in Europe, and the rearmament of NATO countries to the tune of 5% of GDP. We've seen this, and we've seen Israel turn Gaza into a rubble dump, and Russia invade Ukraine.

So perhaps the question of the future is how it was that a society so aware of what was happening allowed itself to be boiled like a frog. Perhaps because we had been distracted, divided, and impoverished to the point of lacking the courage or unity to rebel, and we had plenty of fear disguised as comfort, while we hoped very strongly that the next misfortune would not befall us by the effective method of crossing our fingers firmly.