While they—our parents, my mother—want to feel like they led important, not worthless lives, believing in the things that are worth believing in. But what do they have instead? From all sides, they hear that their lives were total shit, that they never had anything but their terrible missiles and tanks. They were prepared to defeat any enemy. And they could have done it! But without a war, it all collapsed. No one can understand why. That’s something we need to think about…but no one ever taught us how to think.
