Retailers of War

Fair is Fare, equitably.

The following is based on a true story*

More than six thousand years ago, just before breakfast, someone considered that he wasn't going to be eating as nice a breakfast as someone else. This was obviously unfair and something had to be done about this grave injustice. He “convinced” his neighbors that he was unquestionably correct about this breakfast inequality issue and they took to immediate action, military action, specifically.

Their leader organized them into ranks and they all marched off to straighten out this whole-wheat affair with maces, spears, and some horsies. The leader stayed safely behind to eat his pitiful morning scraps. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Many will die for the lack of it while a few will kill to take their fill and call it “justice”. Those who delineate good from evil seldom risk their skin or kin in the warfare game. History illuminates the dead, wounded, and maimed, the ones who bleed without need, are really “just us”.

Fair is fair, subjectively.

The battle won, this first chapter of the book closed quickly but the history of the Retailers of War reads on endlessly. Finally, their new Prince ate a “fair” and “balanced” breakfast as he deserved, at least for a little while.

The vultures, crows, and rats ate like Princes, too. Some may claim that war is inherently inequitable, however the consumers of carrion unanimously disagree.

Some time later the people they mêléed for the “fair” meal deal came with more men, more maces, more spears, and a whole bunch more horsies to take back what they thought was “fair”. Their new God-King declared, “Turnabout is fair play.”

The vultures, crows, and rats ate like kings, too. War is as equitable as can be, you see.

We've always found things to fight over, against, and for. Sometimes, those things aren't even important things like breakfast things, they're abstracts; ideas, concepts, or beliefs. Usually, underneath all those pretty abstracts, the stuff that we are willing to kill another human being for is just stuff, ordinary things. The abstracts maketh murder more palatable, some of the carrion craving class would say “delectable”.

Whilst they snack, we're finger painting pretty pictures in crimson red all the same, very equally. Murder is murder unless the Retailers of War claim it's for truth, justice, equality, freedom, a free meal, or God. Suddenly, everything sounds delicious regardless of who's seated at the table or what is eventually placed upon it.

The vultures, crows, and rats aren't all that interested in the abstract, they are far more concerned with the meat of the matter. Meat, sinew, bile, and marrow, they make no bones about it. No matter who it happens to be. They will eat the flesh happily, dividing and carving up humanity, equal as can be.

This all seems rather silly and far-fetched. Who in their right mind would kill another human being over breakfast? It reminds me of another story that is set in the distant past about a woman who decided that she was willing to die for a piece of fruit that didn't belong to her.

However, the vultures, crows, rats, even the Serpents all agree, and that's a majority, it's a fair trade equitably.

Over the past six millennia we’ve established a couple certainties: "Old habits die hard. We die easily."

The story is our story, which has always been written by the victor in the blood of his brothers. Some claim that civilization can be traced back to the fertile crescent in a land named Sumeria, where city-states battled for centuries over the rich agricultural farm lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. We’re still fighting over that same ground today. We have become comfortable killers, haven't we?

The Carrion Call