War, for most living Americans, is something they've never had to experience. A miniscule percentage of the population, mostly volunteers for the past 50 years, has gone off to some faraway country to do the fighting while the rest of America stayed comfortable at home, fat and happy.
This one might be different. There's a very real potential that Americans might not escape unscathed. There's a very real potential that we could see cities obliterated.
I don't think a lot of people are really thinking about this.
I am. That's why I kinda get pissed when some Twitter bleucheque starts harping about "Why can't we enforce no-fly zones?" We're used to treating our enemies as someone who couldn't possibly touch us. We're treating Putin on the same level as Saddam, Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad, some 3rd rate ruler with a 3rd rate military who we can wage war against while the rest of the country watches football and goes shopping. This is a mistake.
I’m very worried about where we might be heading here.
A good quote I found on Twitter that really hit home with me:
"There is a grotesqueness about so many soft-handed grown men, who've never been punched in the face, have no decent scars, and haven't done a day of hard labor in their lives, Twitter-howling for blood in Ukraine like the most effete Roman spectators at a gladiator match."
I’ve never been to war. Been punched in the face, kicked in the gut, punched people in the face and kicked them in the gut, was a union and non union laborer for twenty years, froze my butt in the cold, burn it in the summer heat and had plenty of back problems from hard work.
I’m a mop jockey in a hospital ER now, ac in the summer, heat in the winter and pretty nurses to flirt with.