Light The Fuse

Once upon a time, there was a punk band called Fear. If you're of the generation that watched Saturday Night Live in 1981, you may recall this was the group that closed down the show on Halloween after being invited by John Belushi to do just that. Coming just a month after Rod Stewart had been crooning "Hot Legs" on the same show, Fear was a warm breeze blowing in off the trash heap. They were a harbinger of the discontent that lived just below the safety and homogenization of Ronald Reagan's America. Here are some lyrics from their best known song, their "hit single," if you will:
Let's have a war
So you can go and die!
Let's have a war!
We could all use the money!
Let's have a war!
We need the space!
Let's have a war!
Clean out this place!
If it sounds severe, that's because it was. It is now. The rancor we Americans have for one another at any given moment is so severe that we have become numb to it. As we tear into each other as if it were some sort of organized event, the rest of the world must wonder if, as the poet once suggested "our time at the top could be coming to an end." Having gone so long without an  actual adversary, we continue to eat our own and make a spectacle out of the way we waste opportunity. 
Let's have a war!
Jack up the Dow Jones!
Let's have a war!
It can start in New Jersey!
Let's have a war!
Blame it on the middle-class!
Let's have a war!
We're like rats in a cage!
And if we lose, we can take our place on the list of failed empires. Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will unearth a Starbucks and wonder how it all went wrong, and the answer will become clear: Pumpkin Spice Latte. 
Let's have a war.