Some political figures (in any society) don't really WANT peace. In peacetime, people expect their leaders to deal with boring stuff like unemployment and infrastructure and education and health care and balancing the budget. Any proposed solutions will be very painful, even if they work as intended (as is unlikely). What's a re-election-minded politician to do?
The two easiest ways to evade responsibility for solving tricky domestic problems are:
1. Blame domestic problems on a subgroup of society: Those undesirables are dragging our otherwise great society down! THEY are the reason we don't have the kind of society WE want and deserve!
This technique is popular with both conservatives and liberals: scapegoats might be Jews, homosexuals, religious fundamentalists of any stripe, immigrants, lawyers, rich people, unions, powerful corporations, or the wonderfully all-purpose "special interests". Yes, we're in a mess, but it's all the fault of (fill in the blank); and before we even try to solve the problem we need to defend our society from THEM!
2. Take the country to war and keep it there, so that domestic problems never quite become a top priority.
Since war pushes those bothersome domestic issues off the front page, voters are less likely to notice when political figures don't exert themselves with any actual attempts at problem-solving. Anyone who raises domestic issues can be dismissed as a person whose priorities and patriotism are questionable; after all, the country is under imminent threat, and what could possibly be more important?
Julie Stoner
(Who doesn't have any solutions, either, but she's off the hook because it's all the fault of the politicians, anyway. See, technique #1 works for me, too!)
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