War!

The Lie of Peace
We pretend we are peaceful. But we’re not.

People like to think of themselves as peaceful.
They light candles. Post slogans. Teach kids to share and vote for diplomacy. But scratch the surface, and something older shows through: a violent species with a thin coat of civility.

Violence is condemned in speeches, while defense budgets balloon. War crimes are mourned on the evening news, then airstrikes are cheered before lunch. Peace is the story told in public—violence is how business gets done.

The profession of war

Organized violence became an institution. It was given medals and pensions. Branded as service. Repurposed to sell trucks, beer, and national myths.

Children learn the names of battles but not of ceasefires. Generals are memorialized; negotiators forgotten. This isn’t an oversight. It’s design.

Follow the money

Peace doesn’t drive profits. War does.

Every bullet has a lobbyist. Every drone strike is a quarterly win. War is good business—predictable, scalable, and fully subsidized. A new bomber gets funded before a new bridge. Trillions flow with bipartisan ease.

No one asks how to pay for war. Only for everything else.

This is a war too

The wars aren’t stopping.

The U.S. is in one now—with Russia. No formal declarations. Just bodies, sanctions, satellite strikes, weapons shipments. Ukraine is the main theater, but the conflict is global. It’s rebranded as “support” or “strategy”—but it's war by any honest measure.

No draft. No rationing. No American cities in rubble.

It’s war. People are dying.
Though not us.
What a great war.

This is how empire modernizes. The death toll moves off-screen. The cost disappears into columns on a spreadsheet.

War no longer ends. It just changes formats.

The new front line

Forget trenches. In modern war, infrastructure is the target.

Russia isn’t just fighting soldiers in Ukraine. It’s bombing power plants. Leveling apartment buildings. Cutting off water, heat, and electricity. This isn’t strategy—it’s siege. A war of attrition by way of demolition.

When missiles hit a substation, children freeze in the dark. When a dam breaks, entire towns drown. When a maternity hospital is shelled, that’s not bad aim—it’s the message.

War today doesn’t just kill on the battlefield. It kills in basements, in bread lines, in ambulance delays, in the slow bleed of a country stripped of the basic means to function.

And the logic is spreading.

Take out the power grid, and let winter do the rest. Destroy the roads, and starve the cities. Bomb the railways, and break the supply chain. Then say you’re just hitting military targets.

It’s war. People are dying.
Though not us.
What a great war.

Until it is us. Until something ruptures, and the civilized world finds out it was only held together by wires, pipes, and lies.

This isn’t cynicism

This is clarity.

Humanity has always made room for violence. Called it honor. Called it security. Called it the price of civilization. But the façade is wearing thin.

A society obsessed with strength keeps choosing war. It speaks of peace, but only means control. It blesses bombs and salutes the flag, then wonders why nothing gets better.

The costume of nobility

Stop telling lies.
Teach the history as it happened: conquest, profit, denial.
Dismantle the machine, or at least stop pretending it’s something noble.

Peace won’t come from pretending to be peaceful.
It starts by telling the truth:

This is who we are.
And it doesn’t have to be.

But war isn’t just a habit—it’s a performance.

Every nation marches to battle in costume.
Not just uniforms, but stories stitched into every seam.
The camouflage, the medals, the polished boots—they don’t just hide the body.
They hide the truth.

Dress a man for killing and call him brave.
Drape a flag over a coffin and call it sacred.
Design the costume well enough, and no one asks what the war is really for.

These aren’t instincts.
They’re stagecraft.
And the audience claps every time.

The bloody record

If all of this sounds exaggerated, sentimental, or too dark, consider the record. Below is a small sample of what human progress actually looks like when stripped of its flags and anthems.

Major wars in human history

Prehistoric to Ancient (Pre–500 CE):

• Tribal conflicts (e.g., Jebel Sahaba ~13,000 BCE)
• Sumerian–Akkadian Wars
• Egyptian–Nubian campaigns
• Battle of Kadesh (~1274 BCE)
• Greek–Persian Wars
• Peloponnesian War
• Alexander the Great’s conquests
• Punic Wars
• Roman Civil Wars
• Jewish–Roman Wars

Medieval (500–1500):

• Islamic conquests
• Viking raids
• Crusades
• Mongol invasions
• Hundred Years’ War
• Wars of the Roses

Early Modern (1500–1800):

• Thirty Years’ War
• English Civil War
• Seven Years’ War
• American Revolutionary War
• Napoleonic Wars

Modern (1800–1945):

• U.S. Civil War
• Franco-Prussian War
• Boer Wars
• World War I
• Spanish Civil War
• World War II

Contemporary (1945–Present):

• Korean War
• Vietnam War
• Arab–Israeli Wars
• Iran–Iraq War
• Gulf War
• Afghanistan War
• Iraq War
• Syrian Civil War
• Yemen Civil War
• Russia–Ukraine War
• Sudanese Civil War
• Dozens of proxy and covert conflicts, declared or not

Thanks for reading Burnt Ground.
If this cut through the noise—or cut too close—pass it on. That’s how truth spreads. Even the bloody kind.