Enough Naming Everything as War
I elect to open the year writing about my dismay over our national addiction to calling nearly everything a ‘war' on this or that. Depressingly, over the past decades we have had wars on
Drugs
Poverty
Terrorism
Want (international)
Journalism
Spam
I elect to open the year writing about my dismay over our national addiction to calling nearly everything a ‘war' on this or that. Depressingly, over the past decades we have had wars on
Drugs
Poverty
Terrorism
Want (international)
Journalism
Spam
And even a War on Christmas, courtesy of conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly. Numberless wars, not a single victory. It would do us some good to be done with hyperbole, without, breathlessly, having to declare a war on it.
War is (or at least used to be) serious business and serious business is seldom helped by being made light of. Declaring what is as improbable to declare as a war on drugs and even less probable to win, makes drug intervention frivolous. A yellow-brick road that leads not to victory, but OZ. Win…