If you went to someone and asked them to get into a fight, they’ll probably say no. If you told them all they need to do is watch and cheer as someone else does the fighting, they might jump at the opportunity.
Why wouldn’t they? It’s easy.
This is exactly what we see happening in our national discourse from time to time. Those who raise their fists into the sky and bay for blood are seldom the ones risking anything.
The middle-class uncle on WhatsApp groups cheering for war will hardly ever send their children into the armed forces. The politician giving hate speeches calling upon the youth to pick up swords and fight imaginary wars with their neighbours will send his children abroad to study in Ivy League colleges. The TV studio vulture who seems to be drowning in nationalistic fervor will be done later in the night and head home surrounded by his Z-plus security.
In the meantime, everyone except the soldier will play at being a brave warrior.
War shouldn’t be theatre. It shouldn’t be something that we enter easily. It shouldn’t be an opportunity to sell merchandise and entertainment products.
War has real consequences, not only for those who fight and die, but also for those who suffer its economic ravages. In a few years time, when the tides of price rise hit, the ones who get swept away will be the small businesses, the shopkeepers, and the wage labourers.
The middle-class uncle’s kid will be in an MNC job by then, probably even working abroad, reading intellectual articles written by the politician’s Ivy League educated kid who sometimes appears on local podcasts run by warmongering desi teens who make a side income getting paid by the ruling party to regurgitate their warmongering propaganda.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
One response to “War as entertainment for the middle class”
Thank You Sir , This Was Really So Simply Explained & Logical Truth , & I don’t know how much , but Maybe Having Someone Posted near The Border , I think helps me Understand it more .