The War in Gaza has unearthed long-hidden fault lines within Western Society. 

Historical forces, long obscured but operating on the subconscious, now are bursting forth upon news screens and social media feeds at a rapid rate. 

Many contending ideologies and belief systems have given various explanations for these fault-lines…however, each of their explanations is incomplete, creating a partial picture that obscures the reality of the whole. 

It is this reality of the whole that this article shall turn. 

PROXY FIGHT PAY OFF 

What is of great interest to me is that in the United States today, the War in Ukraine has taken on the status of WWII

It’s treated as the “Good Fight” in Europe against a brutal dictator who looks very similar to us, who’s got to be crushed with nothing less than total victory. 

Meanwhile, the War in Gaza has taken on the status of Vietnam. 

It’s treated as the morally ambiguous “Quagmire” where “everybody is to blame” and “all sides need to seek peace”. It’s even complete with violent anti-war protests, just like the old days in the jungle! 

What’s interesting is…there are no American Troops deployed to this latter-day WWII, this latter-day Vietnam. 

It’s all being done by proxies…and yet it still is generating just as visceral emotions in all corners of society as the originals!

Why is this? 

AN EAGLE WITH CLIPPED WINGS 

In today’s International Security landscape, America has given up its status as a Warrior Caste Nation. 

After WWII, the writing was on the wall. 

Sure, the old spirit remained in our Cold War commitments to our International Allies, and continued in the early decades of the GWOT. 

From Korea to Vietnam, from Afghanistan to Iraq, the Eagle showed that it could still fly…but only with clipped wings. 

A Warrior Caste Society does not clip the wings of its Eagles…for with clipped wings, no Eagle can fly for long. 

And these clippings reveal: the Spirit of the Merchant Caste supplanted the Spirit of the Warrior Caste long ago in Postwar America. 

ATHENS AND SPARTA 

Since America has chosen the Merchant Caste path for its own, it has looked abroad to others to fulfill its security function as the Warrior Caste. 

We see ourselves as Athens…the economic, maritime powerhouse whose strength is in our economy. And consequently, we look to others as Sparta to defend us from the Persian rampaging hordes of the world. 

A very similar thing happened in the Days of Rome. 

Once the Warrior Caste Society par excellence, by the end the Romans were outsourcing their security to the Germanic Tribes upon their Frontier, to protect them from the Huns and allied Eastern foes. 

We see the same thing happening today: America is Athens, and we use Israel as our Sparta in the Middle East. 

How this came about, and how it has affected the American Psyche, is an interesting tale…one that must be understood fully to make sense of the world around us. 

But alas…that is a tale for another time!

Richard Barrett

12-18-2023

Written at 8:13 PM, somewhere in the USA…

Sources Cited

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