Fighting Forever

DEXTER FILKINS, a foreign corrrespondent for the New York Times, recently wrote and publisehd "The Forever War". I initially mistakenly got the false impresssion that the monograph deals with culltural wars in America,and their seeming endlessness, but Filkins instead discusses America's nearly equally interminable shoooting wars abroad since nine one one, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Book reviewers of the work are almost unamimously favorably impressed with Filkins' scholarship, and describe his book as more than a mere recapitulation of the United State's disastrous twenty first century wars in the middle east, but rather,an incisive examination of the nature of war generally, and how it imapcts the individuals involved, the nations involved, and history itself. When I realized my mistake, I chose not to read the book - I already know as much about America's foreign military adventurism and its disastrous consequences for America and for the world than I really want to, seminal area of concern that it remains. Instead I reflected on the book's title, and how neatly it applies to our never ending cultural wars right here in the nifty fifty. The essence of it is thie: we the American people stress and strain, wail and gnash, twist and turn, over the same basic issues, decade after decade, indeed century after interminable century, without ever resolving anything difinitively, without arriving at an acceptable agreement or compromise about any of these issues concerned. Around in circles we go, thrustng, parrying, talking yelling, writing - without getting one damnd thing accoplished. We seem stuck in a rut, mired deeply in the muddy morass of our own national lack of resolve and over abundance of discontent. Politicians and political parties come and go, Books, forever definitive, are published, rise in popularity and decline in forgotten discarded neglect; without purpose or reason or an end to our senseless, prolonged strife. Can't we decide anything? Or do we actually prefer the process itself to any favorable conclusion? Do we really enjoy endless arguing this much? Are we a Christian nation, or are we not? Should abortion be legal, or forbidden? Should it be leagl and rare, of illegal and comonly performed in back allies? Should drugs be legal or illegal? State's rights, versus the power of the federal government? Democracy, or plutocracy? National isolationism,or sustained engagement with the world? Are LGBTQ people people? Are minorities minorities? How should we treat them? With equality accompanied by self congratulatory back slapping? Or should they be equal in name and law only, but relegated to de facto second class status? Gay pride or gay avoidance? What about tarrifs and trade policies? High, or low? The shape of the curve representing the history of American tariff levels looks like a veritable roller coaster. Woman's rights, of course, never stray far from he front of our fertile minds. Amid all this contentious, disputatious public discourse, we seem to be having fun. Why bring to an end a good time by settling anything? Keep the ball rolling! If there is a downside, and indeed there may not be, it is that amid all this emotional and intellectual venting and partying, we indeed let off a lot of steam, but we seem to be living in a a country which really never solves anything, never really gets anything done.