Life During Wartime

I was just having lunch with a bunch of buddies, we know each other from Jim Lewi's Aspen conference. And it's a free-ranging conversation, concentrating primarily on travel. Peter and Barb just took a five week trip to Asia. Nichol said she had no desire to go to Japan. And as we're eating our ribs and burgers, it occurs to me, there's a war going on.

The most impactful article I read in the past month, that I keep telling people about, was in the "New York Times," how during the Second World War, life went on as normal in Germany. Of course you didn't want to be a Jew, but assuming you were Aryan...

"Almost until the last stages of the war, when the Soviet Army conquered Berlin in a devastating battle that reduced the city to rubble, the cinemas were full, the dance revues were in full swing, the soccer competition went on, and people visited the zoo and sunbathed on the Wannsee opposite the infamous villa where the logistics of the Holocaust were worked out over glasses of brandy."

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/opinion/history-hope-delusion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UlA.06Hc.H2MgIqTlyAO6&smid=url-share

This was a wake-up call. I assumed everybody was hunkered down, after all, the Allies were raining bombs down upon them and...

Life went on as normal.

Now if you read the linked piece, which I recommend, you'll find out it has a lot to do with authoritarianism, how people are complicit, believing things will get better. And that's interesting, but that was not what I was feeling at lunch.

What I was feeling was we were jocular, without a care in the world, and not quite halfway around the world, people not only were losing their homes, they were losing their lives.

Now when it comes to the Iran war... I'm numb. You could call it overload. From DOGE to ICE to so much more, and now there's a war?

If you're a boomer, you consider war anathema. We couldn't understand it. Yes, World War II happened, before we were born, but that set the record straight. Of course there was the cold war, but that was no reason for people to lose their lives.

Yet that was what was happening, on both sides in Vietnam. We had to stand up against the Domino Theory, which proved to be completely false.

The seventies were about licking our wounds, recovering from the turmoil of the sixties.

The eighties were about an economic run-up, the boomers cashing in.

The nineties were about the fall of communism.

And the twenty first century has been about tech and income inequality.

But, for a while there, we were convinced there would be no more wars.

You've got to know, the boomers had nuclear paranoia. We crouched under desks to protect ourself from fallout. The bomb couldn't be dropped. And then we were convinced it never would be...we even had SALT treaties. We felt that the stalemate would go on forever.

But the wars that did exist... It was all old school, sans nuclear bombs. But North Vietnam did introduce us to guerilla warfare, turns out big bad America could not compete with hearts and minds, that's how strong belief systems are. And then we got Ukraine... I expected Russia to run over the country in a matter of weeks, if not days, and so did Putin. But it turns out that drones not made in sleek factories, but basements, could keep the Russians at bay.

But we still could not understand the war in Ukraine...in that in a first world country, that had come so far, that such destruction could take place. As for Russia, it has sustained 1.2 million casualties, with somewhere between 190,000 and 480,000 killed.

That's a lot of people. Losing their lives for exactly what?

This is another thing that bugged us in the sixties, the fat cats and their children did not have to fight, it was the underclass who had no other financial options and the youth of America, that was being drafted in droves.

And the big discussion today is about the perils of social media. Well, when I was a teenager, your biggest fear was being drafted and KILLED! It could happen, to many it did.

So how did we get here, to this era of bellicosity? We truly thought this was behind us, no matter how delusional we were.

Now on 9/11 America was targeted. A good portion of the public wasn't even alive back then, certainly not aware. But the anger and hysteria in the wake of those attacks... You see, we believed it couldn't happen here, that we were inviolate. But then it did.

And now you've got Newt Gingrich saying to drop atomic bombs in Iran to win the war. And he wasn't joking.

But this isn't really about the war. It's about life. I'm living a normal life.

Sure, my assets have taken a hit. As for gas... My car requires premium, but it's nearly twenty one years old and paid for, it's not an F-150 or giant SUV that I'm paying a grand a month for that costs a fortune to fill.

People are dying.

And, of course, when the Jews killed people in Gaza, there were mass protests on college campuses. But when thousands of protesters were killed in Iran? Crickets. Almost as bad as Trump saying "help is on its way," and then not showing up. Yes, these people were EXECUTED!

But I'm not going to debate Trump with you. I'm not even going to thread the needle with the Israelis, other than to say whatever rationalization Netanyahu has for his actions, the consequence has been increased antisemitism, and it was already high.

But I go skiing. I talk at lunch about my bucket list. Before that we were discussing financial advisors. It's like the rest of the world doesn't exist. Then again, what exactly can we do?

I, for one, no longer believe in the system. The useless Democrats and the press tell us it's all about elections...if only it were.

But, once again, I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty, but I do want to talk about the cognitive dissonance. People are losing their lives, innocent people, and for most Americans it's like it doesn't even matter, if they think about it at all. Sure, it's happening far away, but the internet has shrunk the world, we're not as isolated as we once were.

Never mind that we all have our own news sources, and you can't convince anyone their opinion is wrong.

Meanwhile, the goal is to create your own personal brand...

Like I said, I can't wrap my head around the war. It's far from static, the morning's newspaper is already out of date. And the apps online...there's information there, but there's also a lot else. Like the Oscars, baseball...life is going on like normal.

Like it did in Germany in the thirties and forties.

I could ask how that turned out, but that's not even my point.

I guess my point is that everybody's going along with their everyday business. Planning for tomorrow like we're still living in the nineties.

And will that continue?

Will the AI bubble burst?

There are big issues in the world, and you'll see them being addressed, but we're all so overwhelmed...we can't keep tabs on everything.

So we continue to live our lives, oblivious.

It's very weird.


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