Suppose we adopt an American story as metaphor representing the human condition, and explore the possibilities by tinkering with it at the edges. The story is a real life occurrence that unfolded near the end of the Nineteenth Century. It was a feud that erupted between two families – The Hatfield and McCoy families – reflecting the feud that erupts from time to time, as it has the habit of doing, between the member nations of Planet Earth’s human family.
In the
real story, members of the feuding families got hurt and died, so did the
soldiers that fought in the wars of nations. Even the civilians that wanted to
stay away from the war, saw it come to them, take them down a single victim at
a time, or take them down by the thousands, the way things ended in Hiroshima, Nagasaki
and Dresden.
This
being the reality that festers at the roots of the human condition, people
everywhere have come out, and expressed indignation at what the human family is
doing to itself. And so, each in their own way discussed the means by which the
human race can change its condition. Because it took a century and a half to
make the handful of people that make up the Hatfields and the McCoys end their
feud, we can only hope that it will not take the millions of humans much time
to get as lucky.
Meanwhile,
people like Clifford D. May go against the grain and keep reiterating the
suggestion that the way to end all wars is to have more wars. And the way to
accomplish this, he asserts, is to ramp up the production of weapons and put
them in the hands of as many people and potential killers as possible.
But cognizant
of the reality that more guns in the American big cities brought more
bloodshed, not more deterrence or more peace, Clifford May tried to justify the
upside-down position he took by adopting an unusual approach. Whereas a fiction
story is usually made to unfold along the classical lines of the good guys who
wear the pale hats ultimately win over the bad guys who wear the dark hats,
Clifford May jumbled the order of things.
Thus, according
to Clifford May and those in his camp, it no longer matters who wears the pale
hat and who wears the dark hat. That’s because what counts today according to
their movement, is who sits on the progressive left of the political spectrum
favoring a dull peace, and who sits on the conservative right favoring a
glorious war.
Based on
that twist of the mind, you will not be surprised to see that the dark-hatters
of yesterday were made into the white-hatters of today, and vice-versa. It is
that beside giving the Japanese (planners of the Pearl Harbor attack) a pale
hat to wear, Clifford May gave the same hat to the following former
dark-hatters: Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Vietnam while giving the dark hat to former pale-hatters
such as the former Soviet Union, China and Iran.
So now
that you cannot be sure who the Hatfields are and who the McCoys are, as you
seek to separate the good guys from the bad guys on a planetary scale, Clifford
May wants you to believe that his rearrangement of the world populations,
placing them into Right biased and Left biased columns, will help the human
race attain the permanent peace it sought since the beginning of time.
Here, in
condensed form, is how Clifford May expressed all that:
“Peace
requires deterrence, and deterrence requires military strength clearly superior
to that of any adversary or combination of adversaries. George Washington told
Congress that to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of
preserving peace. Is the US doing and spending what is necessary to achieve
that? No. And of course, too many NATO members
are still not contributing adequately to the collective security. Alliances are
tough to maintain. But accomplishing that mission is necessary if the US is to
lead a growing and strengthening free world. The alternative: The US sits on
its hands and watches the free world shrink and weaken. Which future do you
want for your grandchildren?”
As can
be seen, while pointing out the futility in what he advocates, Clifford May
goes on to say that the choice which the American people must make for their
grandchildren is to forge tough-to-maintain new alliances with other countries.
And while taking this risky road, May wants America to get itself deeper into
debt as it tries to outspend the combined military budgets of its perceived and
imagined enemies.
But what
does Clifford May foresee will happen when the Hatfield and McCoy nations of the
world decide to swap hats again? Will he advocate the carpet bombing of Paris, London
Tel-Aviv and Rome? Will he advocate sending American troops to liberate Iran and
North Korea from the Sino-Russian grip?
These are intriguing questions, and there is no doubt that the response to them will be just as intriguing. But we may or may not live long enough to see if history will unfold at a high enough speed, show us the future and satisfy our curiosity. Thus, for now at least, all we can do is speculate.