Commentary
Wars beget such anxiety that those not involved in the fight for survival at the front engage in endless emotional torment and speculation.
This is a tactical, individual reaction within a viral environment, so as individual anxiety achieves mass adoption, it acquires strategic impact. And today, that mass adoption is guaranteed by the still largely-ungovernable new technologies of instant perception dissemination.
Even at the battlefront, the response is visceral and tactical. Survival there depends on innate human response, not on detached, dispassionate assessment. That “dispassionate assessment,” supposedly guiding the strategic management of war, is left to the detachment of leadership. But what if there is no “dispassionate assessment”; no “detachment”? And what if the accumulated emotions of an engaged (involved) polity achieve such mass that dispassionate assessment is, in any event, swept aside, and all judgment and management on the war become driven by the hysteria of the crowd?…