EXHAUSTED
By Alex Ness
September 1, 2026
A PLACE TO VENT
When I chose to create this blog it was give a vent to allow my constant need to write, I meant for it to be an area of ideas and opinions I have. Instead it seems that I've instead used it to consider popular culture media rather than a place to express. That isn't a problem, I mean, I do speak freely here. By doing this article, I hope, will change the trend and return to its chosen roots. It isn't, after all, that anyone is complaining other than me. I am currently frustrated by the modern powers of our world to engage in war as a tool of diplomacy.
WAR
Our current world features war in Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, The Congo, and still more. In the 1990s, after the Cold War ended, we dared believe that the world had lived through a violent dangerous time, and that we'd never have to worry in that way again. I think that, for the most part, is true. We understand that nuclear confrontation bears with it egregious amounts of triggers, any one of the many could lead us back to the dark times, and worse. We'd made choices that, for the time, might have made sense. But having experienced that time, and understood the dangers, to return to that period of armed stand offs and nuclear brinkmanship makes no sense at all.
A time back, I'd the opportunity to speak to a person involved in strategic planning and tactics, who had retired and has since died. He wrote to me about a work I had reviewed and he didn't insult me or the work considered, but said, the writer of that product had no military experience. And he went into detail how the product was a fairy tale, rather than a hard look at the world. We chatted more over email and his commentary led me to perceive our world as being in one that is one hellovalot more dangerous than we might perceive. The desire for peace and kindness is wonderful. It would be wonderful to have those things. But the chance we go to war, or witness an act that can never be fixed, makes me wonder what is the real agenda in the wars of the present.
"Bertrand Russell compared it to the game of chicken: Since the nuclear stalemate became apparent, the governments of East and West have adopted the policy which Mr. Dulles calls 'brinksmanship.' This is a policy adapted from a sport which, I am told, is practiced by some youthful degenerates. This sport is called 'Chicken!'." (Sourced from Wikipedia from the article about Brinksmanship.)
ENDURANCE
Yes, I am safe in the heart of Minnesota. No, that does not free me from worrying about the focus and aim that the world has adopted. I have had a long time hope that my poetic, prose, and political choice, will reduce the power of the makers of war. There is a difference in my efforts and those of other creatives. My work isn't bound in the power of word, since I have few readers. But when a reader of my poems wrote and said, "Why are you so depressing, you write about nuclear annihilation, wars turning into extinction, and worse. We are no longer dealing with those worries. Why keep bringing it up." I said, as long as people possess the ability to make war with nuclear weapons, the danger exists. And truly, when a society can die due to a mistake, misperception, or direct desire, it becomes something much greater than the facts that describe it.
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