The Deluge

by Stephen Markley

All the bumper stickers and parades and ‘thank a veteran for your freedom’ bullshit—all the pedestalizing. All the movies. All that isn’t for you guys who went. It’s for the next time. How else do you get children in Oklahoma City or Fallujah to kill people they’ve never met? Convince them they’ll be heroes.”

To say there was ever any return to normality isn’t quite right, but there was an acquiescence, a decision that a certain amount of chaos would be tolerated in order to let the world grind on, and within the context of the climate crisis, this was very bad news indeed.