We wasted peace and prosperity. 70 years of relative stability and progress, and what did we have to show for it? Climate change and rising inequality. Unjust and barbaric institutions. All our food either came from murder-factories or we produced produce that aspired to be a brand product, a tasteless shadow of what it should be.

And the war didn’t do anything to change it. In the short run it killed off a couple of welfare recipients, so that politicians and economist could talk in private about the positive outcome - but in the long run, the status quo was just as fucked. From our then-current social structures we drew a military consisting of immigrants and working class people with no work, the bottom of society who had nowhere else to go, and would literally kill for a paycheck. We even drafted som chronically unemployable academics as intelligence and supply-line theoreticians. Finally that degree in foreign languages and history could contribute to growth. But the business class never got involved anywhere close to the action, As war-profiteers and desk-generals, sure. But besides that they were too busy in their civilian jobs as consultants and financial investors, busy polishing every part of society into a highly-effective sheen of short-term growth. Killing public institutions and common land and natural resources, so that when the rest of the country was finished fighting the war, there was no land to return to, only a privately-owned playground for the rich and the well-connected where all jobs had long since been outsourced and apartments cost more that what most people could earn in a lifetime. With no jobs, no futures and no hope, the only thing the returning soldiers had, was the ability to see people as targets. In the end it seemed that the only option was to tear it all down, and hope that whoever came after could do a better job.