Years ago, I read a book --can’t recall which-- that described World War I as a giant traffic accident, a war that no one really wanted. Something that the participants blundered into, largely because they kept their alliances secret.
I’ve just started Barbara Tuchman’s THE GUNS OF AUGUST. She argues that Kaiser Wilhelm thought the Germans were in fact a superior race, that they deserved mor influence in Europe and the world than they had, and that they were justified in pursuing that influence. At whatever cost. Moreover, she says, the German people shared that view.
We all know the effect the media can have on public perception, and of course in an oligarchy, the media don’t have much opportunity to say what they really think. The aspect of this that amazes me is that after a catastrophic war, the German people could buy into the same arguments thirty years later. The problem all nations have, I guess, is that the people in the street don’t pay much attention to what’s going on. Or they get caught up in one aspect of an ideology and common sense goes south. Plato compared democracy as mob rule. Not so sure anymore he had it wrong.
I’ll be at the Book Talk Café in Ponte Vidra, Florida, March 30 at 60:30 p.m. Drop by if you’d like to join the conversation.
Also, I’ll be traveling to Brentwood, NY, for Icon 28. It will be held at the Suffolk County Community College. And I’ve added Wiscon, the feminist SF convention, to my calendar. It runs May 22-24 at Madison, WI.
I’ve always hoped I’d live long enough to learn whether there’s life elsewhere. A friend who’s connected with the Kepler mission is predicting that we may have something definite within the next three to five years. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_Mission & http://kepler.nasa.gov/--