All I Want for Christmas is World Peace
Wheelbarrows of war
I’ve decided that all I want for Christmas this year is world peace. It’s a tall order, but entirely possible. Lay down the weapons, head home to your loved ones, refuse to fight in battles that have no business raging. I asked the ‘internet’ this week how many days of world peace there’ve been on our planet in the last 200 years, through the industrial revolution, the advent of the Nobel Peace Prize, the founding of NATO and other three-letter world organizations designed with ‘our best interests’ at heart👀. The response was “zero”. It’s time to rewrite the future to look different than the past. What if we all simply stopped fighting for causes that are not ours? As children we played, we negotiated, we played some more, we took turns, we shared, we hugged it out. What the hell happened to that?
I believe in humanity, I know, still? I believe that world peace is possible. I believe that living peacefully in a neighborhood that’s a patchwork of beliefs and a hodge podge of people, we can zoom out to the county, state, continental, and world views and experience it there. People lie, billionaire egomaniacs pull strings, small groups of small minded people run the show. SO WHAT?! Start on your street and keep pushing upward and outward until they’re all squeezed out of whatever ivory tower enables them to profit from war, to profit from the gruesome deaths of your ancestors and your children. Push and push and push and push - tirelessly.
Below is the original post from last year. I didn’t re-read it because guess what?! Ukraine and Russia are still at war. Drones are still doing what our ancestors did up close and personal with knives and spears and tooth and nail. And, the western nations and three-letter world orgs are still supporting it, still making war mongers rich from it, still spouting the nonsense that goes something like “to have peace, we must first kill these people”. GET THE FUCK OVER IT YOU LIARS!! Like thieves in the night, you’ve stolen our peace and we want it back.
The stunning cover art for this peace is by wildflower. When I saw it in my notes I was arrested by how it evokes an imagined possibility that at any moment it will settle to a peaceful, plate-glass sheen when the air and the earth are still. If this is possible in nature, then it’s certainly possible with human conflict. We’re all subject to the same universal rules. Thank you so much, wildflower. Please visit the wildflower site to peruse the ethereal black and white photography.
Original Post
I was minding my own business in the living room a few weeks ago during a family visit and my husband and brother (ex military) were discussing the war. My husband said “Oh, I saw this foreign legion guy (Joseph MacDonald) talking to an interviewer (Lindybeige) on YouTube about things that work for current battlefields and things that don’t. This Legionnaire, who volunteered to fight for Ukraine, actually went and bought a wheelbarrow to use in the war.” This struck as me completely inane, brilliantly practical, and ludicrously funny at the same time. Since then I’ve turned this over and over in my brain, wearing away the humor but still sensing that there’s something so damnably human about using a wheelbarrow that I had to share it.
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Everyone who follows me knows I despise war. There is no excuse for war. None. It should be globally illegal, replaced by something competitive but relatively benign like a sports match, a card game, or monopoly tournament. On the surface this sounds ridiculous but in reality it is no less ridiculous than pouring trillions of dollars into wars about land or religion or money or resources; wars which have killed or caused the deaths of 187 million people since 1800 alone. (Src: List of wars by death toll - Wikipedia)
That said, it appears that times have indeed changed. The U.S. Civil War was fought with rifles, pistols, grenades, and cannons. While WWI was dominated by machine guns, protective trenches, barbed wire, and mines; WWII saw the rise of airborne bombers, submariner torpedo’s, V1 rockets, howitzers, and tanks as battlefield staples. The advent of radio changed everything with real-time communication to the front lines. Tanks effectively ended the reign of trench warfare which formerly dominated defense. And definitively, the atomic bomb changed the world. Conflicts and skirmishes since then make use of the latest surface to air missiles. The Patriot system and cruise missiles have made tanks and planes nearly obsolete. And, drones have made distance warfare incredibly effective, day or night. Of course nuclear weapons, intended to be the great equalizer and prevent world wars, have become bargaining chips for psychos.
Enter Joseph MacDonald. He likened his time in the military to his prior experience as a festival organizer. His candid manner in the interview was natural and self-effacing. He appeared one of the most practical people I’ve seen on YouTube. He said the army camp was like the festivals he planned, minus the entertainment - people going in and out, checking ID at gates, using radios, arranging food, and performing activities. He felt prepared and said that many were not, not remotely. Many volunteers had unrealistic expectations about weapons, supplies, and the support provided by others such as air or artillery support. He felt the US soldiers were spoiled because of the wealth and power of the US military. Their expectations for certain kit, weapons, and support were too high for the realities of the ground battles covered in drone strikes. Here, soldiers must survive with problem solving and resourcefulness. The kind of resourcefulness that sent these men back into the trenches, circa WW2. Joe made note that trenches, tanks, and helicopters have made a comeback, being the most effective strategies against the drone scourge.
In Bravo Company, Joe became known as "Big Mac”. The interviewer mentioned comments from those who had emailed him about his series of interviews with Joe, sharing both negative (undisciplined, fought, a lot of alcohol use) and positive (friendly, good with problems, and a digger ) and one who said “Tell him I said hi. Nobody digs like ‘Big Mac’”. Here is where Joe’s humanity shines through. He immediately nodded in agreement but said if you need a digger, “Digger Dave can dig. You start digging with this guy who’s 50-ish with a beer gut and mutton chops, I guarantee he’ll still be digging 8 hours later.” Joe felt that digging, walking with pack and gear, and moving stuff were the core tasks in the field and the big steroid types couldn’t match the commitment of ‘Digger Dave’. He further stated that “Digger Dave should get a medal for his service to entrenchment.” Joe feels that the trench is the best ‘armor’, “nothing else is better than mother earth.”
When questioned about his most important kit, Joe said he asked his superiors for a wheelbarrow. It would allow them to build bunkers faster. It could move dirt, tools, equipment, and people. He ended up buying his own when they refused to supply one. It’s astounding to me that we appear to be back to basics - dig dirt, load dirt, move dirt, repeat. I give you the new savior of the battlefield, among billions of dollars of high-tech weaponry and drones - the absolute core of the military industrial complex - the humble $70 steel wheelbarrow now used to shore up the defenses of trench warfare.
While despots and madmen rage on, crushing civilizations and pillaging for their own filthy gain, we have Joseph MacDonald hustling dirt out of the trenches with a wheelbarrow. Now that he’s out, he is working with a friend who’s a retired NASA engineer to design the perfect wheelbarrow for soldiers. It’ll have steel tubes mounted to the top of the sides to insert tree branches which effectively convert it into a litter for larger soldiers who are injured and must be moved quickly. Using the branches as handles, he described their ability to guide the wheelbarrow up even the steepest, slickest embankments quickly, using the glide of the wheel. Here is a man, at the complete and utter mercy of psychopathic world leaders, who is thinking from inside the trench, on the front lines where good men go to die.
When asked by the interviewer if he felt he was brave, he again deferred to others with this story. “I definitely know some really brave people. I don’t know if I’m brave or just the right sort of detached at times.” “Whether it’s bravery or a certain kind of detachment or exactly the right kind of mental illness - who can say.”
There’s no better water cooler conversation we should have each day than ‘how can we push upward to stop war across our planet?’. Join this conversation and spread it like juicy gossip. Remember, there’re way more of us then there are of them.
I've thought about this some and I think 1) nothing will change until regular people stop complying with the b.s. That's what it's going to take. 2) If "world leaders" still get an itch to start something, they don't get any proxies. None. It's Leader of Country A and Leader of Country B, in a room alone. They can punch each other in the face until the cows come home. If Leader of Country B doesn't want to fight, tough luck Leader of Country A! Go suck on a rotten egg!
"I don’t know if I’m brave or just the right sort of detached at times.” Wow. What a line. Such an interesting juxtaposition, the high tech military and the reality of needing a wheelbarrow. Great article, Cori.