A Series of Violent Confrontations

The Superposition of the Current War

My recent Substack piece “There’s Gonna be a War in Montana” did not, in fact, predict WWIII, but people still took it that way. Those who declare the end of history and/or those who call the prospect of war “beyond absurd”—as many who critiqued by piece did—refer to a war war sort of war, like the Civil War or WWII. They don’t mean that no political violence will occur, because it already occurs all the time. They mean that a Big War is very far down the road, if such a thing is even possible anymore.

But their naive protestations towards those of us who discuss war as a present possibility, whether big or little, reveal a disingenuous position. They mistake the bathwater for the baby. When I wrote “There’s Gonna be a War in Montana,” did I mean a four-year, proper-noun, one-million-dead war in Montana tomorrow, or next week, or even next year? Of course not. No serious person could think that. What I meant (besides the obvious commentary on not war but mainstream war discourse, which…