14 Comments

1. Knucklehead:

What if they gave a war and nobody came? Oh, don’t worry none about that, ‘lil darlin. The folks given it will come and they’ll be sure to track down whoever else they need.

Jan 26, 2006 - 11:39 am 2. byrd:

Huh? That’s an odd statement coming from a citizen of a nation at war that does its fighting with an all volunteer army.

Jan 26, 2006 - 12:35 pm 3. chuck:

byrd,

I assure you Knuck is on your side. In a place as rife with irony and gentle sarcasm as the blogosphere you need to read the program closely to follow the plot.

Jan 26, 2006 - 12:58 pm 4. byrd:

I know I’ve seen his posts before but memory didn’t give a sense of where he’s coming from.

Since you’ve taken it upon yourself to give me an unsolicited lesson in internetting, how about helping me out again? Irony and gentle sarcasm are generally directed at something that came before. To what are his irony and gentle sarcasm directed?

Jan 26, 2006 - 2:02 pm 5. Knucklehead:

My bad, Byrd. Unfortunately humor doesn’t work, ever, under either or both of two conditions: when it was poorly constructed or just plain not funny, and when it has to be explained. The former is almost certainly the case here but I’ll go for the latter.

Where I’m coming from is often a bunch of great leaps of associative bits and pieces of remembrance.

Neo-neocon’s continuing “A Mind Is a Difficult Thing to Change” series goes back to the days when she recounts how she was against the Vietnam war and takes us through how her thinking has changed and why, and as a mental health professional, why that is such a difficult journey.

But, anyway, back in the day there was no shortage of lame platitudes. Among the very lamest (I was a darned lame teenager back then and even I recognized it as lame) was “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”. It meant (not that I think you need it explained), of course, that we should all just say no to war. If everyone in the world refused to fight in wars there’d be no wars.

The Trotsky quote tells us precisely why it is lame. It is the opposite of lame – it is a truism.

Anyway, when I read the Trotsky quote the lame lefty Vietnam era quote immediately popped to mind as well as a sort of homespun response to it that I once heard an elderly southern gentleman give to a young female protester.

It struck me as humorous. There was, I should have realized, no way anyone else could have made the same leaps to humor that I had made, but I didn’t.

Now that I’ve explained it it is still non-funny

Jan 26, 2006 - 2:23 pm 6. Knucklehead:

BTW, Byrd, now I’m curious.

That’s an odd statement coming from a citizen of a nation at war that does its fighting with an all volunteer army.

It was an odd statement but I’m missing the connection to “nation at war… all volunteer army.”

Trotsky’s qoute is the truism that it doesn’t matter if one is disinterested in war or a pacifist because, well, war doesn’t care a hoot about such things. You can’t just opt out of war because it will find you.

The reason the “what if they gave a war…” thing is such lame nonsense is because you can’t just refuse to participate. Wars will come to you. It doesn’t take two sides to make war, it only takes one. AQ was giving a war for years, we refused to go, yet they still made war on us. It would have continued on that way indefinitely. The lack of response from us did not stop or prevent AQ’s war against us. As we now know they just kept escallating. If we hadn’t responded after 9/11/01 they would have attacked again and it would probably have been yet another escallation. There are no ways to prevent war and only three ways to stop them: surrender, fight and lose, or fight and win. That last one is my preference.

Not that it matters to the discussion but I have served in our volunteer military.

Jan 26, 2006 - 2:42 pm 7. gumshoe:

if it helps ya any,Knuck,
i got your post on the first shot.

Jan 26, 2006 - 4:18 pm 8. triticale:

“What if they gave a war and nobody came?” is actually a quote from left-wing playwright Kurt Weill. Funny thing tho. The other half of the quote, “Why then, the war will come to you.” somehow got misplaced sometime during the ’60s.

Jan 26, 2006 - 6:41 pm 9. ElMondo:

That’s strange… I’m finding attributions for that quote as belonging to Bertolt Brecht.

But no matter who it comes from, you’re right. Too many people are truncating the response.

Jan 27, 2006 - 7:55 am 10. byrd:

Knucklehead:

Thanks for the explanation. I do that sometimes, say something that’s really quite clever if you can look into my head and see the connections. But the people around me just say “…ummmm…”.

gumshoe got your meaning so that explanation is self-serving, but I’m sticking to it.

As for my response, there’s one extra level of my lack of comprehension that has to be tossed into the mix, and however much I may want to share the blame for the original misunderstanding, this one I have to accept full blame for.

I interpretted “the folks givin it” as Bush and Co., not Al Queda. And “track you down” as “will draft you and send you anyway,” not as “kill you anyway.”

On the plus side, I no longer have a vague recollection of your posts but will remember you quite clearly.

Jan 27, 2006 - 10:16 am 11. Bill:

I thinkn the other way to say Trosky’s and Knucklehead’s respective lines is…

“You are at war with whomever thinks they are at war with you – like it or not.” Be it Osama Bin Ladin, the company backstabber who covets your office, or that crazy wino that’s been following you for the last three city blocks.

But K-H’s second line, “It doesn’t take two sides to make war, it only takes one,” is a peach.

Jan 27, 2006 - 11:55 am 12. Knucklehead:

Bryd,

I had the Eureka moment about what you meant a while after I axed the question. Makes perfect sense – my mistake again.

I haven’t been around here at Roger’s Place much lately which is my loss. Always fun here.

Jan 27, 2006 - 12:51 pm 13. pst314:

“I’m finding attributions for that quote as belonging to Bertolt Brecht.”

It’s the first line of a poem by Brecht:

“What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Why then the war will come to you!
He who stays home when the fight begins
And lets another fight for his cause
Should take care:
He who does not take part
In the battle will share in the defeat.
Even avoiding battle will not avoid Battle,
since not to fight for your own cause really means
Fighting in behalf of your enemy’s cause.”

(text thanks to Jerry Pournelle.)

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill worked together at times, their most famous collaboration being “The Threepenny Opera.” Perhaps it’s not surprising that what they each said is occasionally attributed to the other, and even less surprising that Weill’s words would be misattributed to the more-famous Brecht.

Jan 29, 2006 - 11:06 am 14. pst314:

“The other half of the quote…somehow got misplaced sometime during the ’60s.”

A lot of things got misplaced back then.

Jan 29, 2006 - 11:07 am

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