THE BATTLE OF THE BEHEMOTHS

It could almost be a scene from J.R.R. Tolkien's, 'The Lord of the Rings'.

Two mighty armies face each other across the length and breadth of North America... though these armies do not stand opposed face to face. Instead, the center of the great mass of the USA faces its eastern and western edges.

This is a war of classes and culture, of beliefs and views, it is a war that has been waged for generations... but is only now reaching its peak.

Like two male beasts fighting for the privilege to mate, the fight is for survival, or at least that is how it feels.

In nature when two male beasts fight each other, one is usually weaker, therefore the fight is not long-lived. But when both are of roughly equal strength the fight can last very long and sometimes, even to the death of one or the other.

Logic tells us that it is not a sane decision to fight until one or the other dies... but all logic is lost as emotions drown cerebral responses, and compromise becomes almost impossible.

The social history of the USA has emphasized certain attributes above all others, especially among its males. The aggressive, competitive spirit where winning is lauded above all else has a place of special honor, on the sports field, within the business world and in that of politics. Second place is as nothing compared to the glory of the first, hands raised in triumph, face glowing in acknowledgement of praise from the onlookers, the faithful, the followers the triumphal army.

Within the U.S. business world the same attitudes exist, enough is never enough. The game is not just winning once but winning always and with constantly greater triumphs and all that comes with them. Wall Street analysts, speculators and investors seek infinite profit as the tokens marking the score. Ever more noughts on their bank account tally in a never ending search for the ultimate win to eclipse them all, that carrot which can never quite be reached while the stick of materialist desire always drives them on.

In the world of all those who consider themselves to be in elite positions the status quo always looks the most comfortable place to be. Those elites who look down at the rest of America from their ivory towers, so well endowed with five star quality of decor, academic achievements, copious bank accounts and patrician smiles, observe the drones laboring far below with anxiety. These lesser mortals require to be instructed by those with superior insight, experience and education... or so they believe. They are the true masters of one of the armies engaged in this war.

Their connections are many across these upper heights where corporations interlock with the sub-level of politicians and enjoy interplay with mass media where informal recognition flows back and forth in a largely unseen society of  familiarity. It is an informal militia of elite minds requiring no formal communication, simply a living milieu of values shared, mythologies agreed, mutual status acknowledged and goals subliminally set.

And the enemy?

The enemy is seen as the ignorant, the gross, the uneducated, the lesser cast, those ‘others’ that are simply not ‘them’. They are feared as a force of interrupters, always threatening to disturb their peaceful, complacent, eternally self-rewarding world.

Below these elites living up in the clouds of splendor, are those who see their existence in terms of the values of these, their betters, and  hold them to be the arbiters of all that is true and good, the USA, shining beacon of decency and justice to the world, the noble defender of freedom, democracy and  open society where right values have pride of place, with its elite defenders holding all oppression at bay. They are the noble, the righteous, always imbued with good intent. How drear, base and tawdry all others seem to them, those who are so perfect, so righteous and so completely infallible.

This army governed by such an elite is formidable indeed and uses all the weaponry in its arsenal to maintain the perfection it conceives to be its birthright. For these elites and their foot soldiers almost any means can be justified in the war against their enemies... for aren’t they the epitome of perfection and all others wicked by comparison? How awful would it be for that perfection to be alloyed and brought low? Such a thought is unthinkable, absolute anathema and the defense of that perfection worth fighting for with all means possible.

So... who is the enemy?

The enemy has a scattering of high-minded commanders though each one tends to be given loyalty only sporadically as the army is quite unruly and jealous of its freedoms. The commanders who attract most respect tend to be scarred by many battles, warriors who deploy skills of cunning and rhetoric to inflame the emotions of others to gird them too for battle. The army they lead shares most of the same mythologies with its rival force, the belief in their nation being exceptional above all others, its pride of place as most powerful, richest, most far reaching in its glorious ability to intervene nobly across the world.

But recent events and many failures have blunted its enthusiasm for distant wars and its attention has therefore turned back to home and the fight there.

This army’s foot soldiers unite around a strident demand for individual freedom and release from the strictures, penalties and taxes imposed on them by the state. They tend to be less cerebral and more emotional than the foot soldiers of the opposing army. They generally have work that demands more of them with fewer rewards and find themselves emotionally rebellious, seeking outlets for their frustrations. They mistrust those who talk over their heads and cleave closely and loyally to those who speak plainly. For four years now they have been led by a ferocious bull of a man, a low-brow in-fighter and expert in guerilla warfare who has now been mortally wounded.

As this new phase in the war takes place, those who believe themselves to be the rightful, sole guarantors of American norms, of the status quo where convenient rewards across all elites flow comfortably and an easy transfer from one elite to another can continue unhindered are ascendant. While suppressing the ire of the local foe their attention will also fall on the foreign enemies they perceive as undermining them using all necessary means. To do this they gather in a union of seeming sophistication. But this they do behind a hard, warrior’s face.

Their internal enemy has just been defeated and smarts from that defeat, angry and confused, claiming they have been cheated by their unscrupulous foes. A time of turmoil seems set to begin where unpredictable forces on both sides will come into play. A plague has decimated the fortunes of many, homes and employment have been lost, the future looks bleak with more of the same to come.

And there... there in the midst of all this appears from the mist of the carnage just experienced, a battlefield wide and open for all to see... as the first combatants begin to engage one another with even fiercer challenges than before.

Will good sense prevail? Or will base emotion hold sway?

No one can predict what will now unfold as the battle of the behemoths is set to begin.