Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'Monstrous Regiment'. This is especially relevant now;
"There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn't be fighting them, eh? There was always a war."
— Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
The whole paragraph is the voice of a country telling itself a story it needs to believe, and that one little rhetorical shrug is where the mask slips — because it's not even an argument, it's a confession. We fight them because they're treacherous. How do we know they're treacherous? Because we're fighting them. Round and round, and everyone nodding along.
What sticks with me is the hedge thing. Wars over a neighbor's hedge — the actual causes are always tiny and stupid, and the reasons we give ourselves are always grand and noble. Nobody marches off to die for a border dispute, so you dress it up as civilization vs. barbarism, peace-loving vs. warlike. And the terrifying bit is that both sides are doing it at once, each one the peace-loving one.
Also: "There was always a war." Bookends the paragraph like a sigh. Not "there is a war" — there was always one, there will always be one. It's the resignation that gets me. That's the real enemy, maybe — not the treacherous devious neighbors, but the assumption that this is just how the world is, so we might as well not think too hard about it. Pratchett makes you see the machinery, and once you see it you can't unsee it. That's the whole trick of him, really.
"There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn't be fighting them, eh? There was always a war."
— Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
The whole paragraph is the voice of a country telling itself a story it needs to believe, and that one little rhetorical shrug is where the mask slips — because it's not even an argument, it's a confession. We fight them because they're treacherous. How do we know they're treacherous? Because we're fighting them. Round and round, and everyone nodding along.
What sticks with me is the hedge thing. Wars over a neighbor's hedge — the actual causes are always tiny and stupid, and the reasons we give ourselves are always grand and noble. Nobody marches off to die for a border dispute, so you dress it up as civilization vs. barbarism, peace-loving vs. warlike. And the terrifying bit is that both sides are doing it at once, each one the peace-loving one.
Also: "There was always a war." Bookends the paragraph like a sigh. Not "there is a war" — there was always one, there will always be one. It's the resignation that gets me. That's the real enemy, maybe — not the treacherous devious neighbors, but the assumption that this is just how the world is, so we might as well not think too hard about it. Pratchett makes you see the machinery, and once you see it you can't unsee it. That's the whole trick of him, really.
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