Cobb reflects:
The collapse of the WTC helped remind us how deeply we can suffer and still stand. Anybody that consumes drama, especially the vulgar and petty drama of our pop entertainment culture, needs a kick in the teeth every blue moon. That's what we got, and how. And when we got it, a lot of us were reminded - I know that I was - that war is always with us. War is always with us.
Over the past weeks I have been arguing that we are at war. Not the war that this date brings to mind, but between the factions in the United States. I am surprised by the resistance I found to my use of that word: “war”.
Like its opposite, “peace”, I suppose “war” has been abused and corrupted to a point where there are too many definitions and too many contexts to carry a precise meaning. War and peace are subjective concepts, different for each of us.
We argue over the language. Is it war or insurgency or just a single event? If nobody was killed, is it still an act of war? Can there be a war of ideas or a war against some human condition?
But the situation beneath the language doesn’t care what we call it. There is conflict that can end only in death or surrender. The choice is between Verdun and Dachau. That’s war to me.
And Cobb is right, it is always with us. So you must choose. Who’s side are you on?