Is that what people tend to end up with? I mean, you know so much more than me. But while I’m ashamed to admit how long my reading of history was only politics and war, I promise you can still get some idea that war sucks for everyone involved. Starting at least as far back as Thucydides who writes basically nothing but.
Maybe they aren’t really studying it or are reading it very selectively? But I think there’s also the possibility that they know, and it’s what they want, to burn out in what they imagine will be some meaningful way. I come back a lot to George Orwell on Mein Kampf:
Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings *don’t* only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.
