We’re reportedly about to go to war with Iran. I just checked a minute ago: The lead story at The New York Times is the Supreme Court’s tariff decision; likewise The Washington Post and MS NOW. At CNN, the lead story is Trump’s trade war. At Fox, it’s a toss up between the trade war and a debit card scandal in California. And so on. Literally business as usual. The pattern is clear enough: as we prepare for war, the thing to do is to turn inward and turn away from it in a spirit of make-believe. Tariffs matter more than war. Trump matters more than war. Debit cards matter more than war. At this point, anything matters more than war. War is imminent, hence unreal. 

War, in short, has become normalized in the familiar imperial way, by equating peace with perpetual warfare confined to the periphery of empire, and to the peripheries of consciousness. It’s out there, hence not here, hence nowhere. 

And yet in a subterranean sense, war is everywhere, or at least the military is. It’s become normal for high schools to have Air Force J-ROTC programs, and for unversities not only to have ROTC programs but to go out of their way to market to soldiers and veterans. It’s become normal for academic conferences to be sponsored by military contractors and feature military speakers offering up military propaganda under the guise of impartial scholarship.

Ad for Thomas Edison State University, Princeton Junction rail station, West Windsor, New Jersey

It’s become normal for high-level military officers to run universities, or for the architects of war to get faculty positions at top-ranked universities. It’s not only normal for private equity firms like Carlyle to own half the country ($480 billion), but normal for them to diversify their holdings so that they control civilian and military sectors–bombs and hospitals, missiles and mass transit, environmentally friendly technologies and the technologies of mass death. We no longer even notice the military installations in our midst, or the deployments that issue from them. They blend in.

New Jersey National Guard Armory, Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, New Jersey

We talk a big game about Hamas using human shields in Gaza, but in fact, we are human shields for the ubiquitous military activities all around us. 

US Navy aircraft carrier under repair, Elizabeth River, Norfolk, Virginia

It seems normal, but the truth is that a society that normalizes warfare normalizes mass, indiscriminate killing, and so, normalizes psychopathy. My cheerful and competent StretchLab tech tells me casually that her son is in the military; it would be rude to suggest that his career choices are a mistake, or that she’s wrong to be so casual about them. The house down the street valorizes Eden Alexander, a former American “hostage” (soldier) fighting for Israel; the implication is that it’s totally normal to serve in a foreign military that’s violated a ceasefire 1,000+ times (see this as well), and is in the process of committing genocide. Who would question it? 

ROTC office, Niagara University, Niagara, New York

“Death to the IDF” graffiti gets investigated by the police as “bias intimidation”; no one in authority can explain how or why. Apparently, it’s a hate crime to wish metaphorical death on a foreign army engaged in a foreign war, but not a hate crime for the army itself to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity, or for its supporters to exult over it on social media to the point of “orgasm.” The invitation by educators (for an audience of children) of an indicted war criminal is taken for granted; those who protest his presence are widely regarded as racists and criminals, arrested and ostracized. Every government building in New Jersey (and likely elsewhere) by law flies a POW-MIA flag in honor of non-existent POWs and MIAs in a war that ended in defeat fifty years ago. No one questions it, or tolerates anyone who does. It doesn’t matter whether the POWs or MIAs exist or not. What matters is whether you’re willing to genuflect before the idea that they do. 

POW-MIA flag, Edgemont Park, Montclair, New Jersey

When war with Iran comes, if it comes, virtually all mainstream discussion will concern its strategic success or failure, not its moral justifiability–as virtually all does now. Those who question its justifiability will invite suspicion, scorn, or worse. And yet the questions remain: what moral justification is there for going to war with Iran, or anyone else? Why are we expected to fall behind every war anyone in power decides to have, simply because they’ve decided to have one? When will we be permitted again to live in peace, undisturbed by the perpetual warfare that our regime and its citizens regard as normal?

Because in fact, it’s not normal, and neither are they. A perpetual state of warfare is a perpetual state of mendacity, hysteria, and bloodlust. We can’t afford to reconcile ourselves to life under such conditions without going to war on ourselves, and destroying ourselves more surely than anyone else could. And yet we have.