Wars live in men. Until recently, women on this side of the world were able to laugh about it, as it became clear via a tap hype that their friends were thinking of the annexations and atrocities of the Roman Empire every day.
A peculiarity, it was not, that fascination for armed conflicts that lives in boys and men. Perhaps it is a legacy of their fathers, who sought connection with their sons together Das Boot to look. Perhaps all that knowledge of expeditions, battles and vassal states is inspired by the idea that men are responsible for curating human history of cruelty. Perhaps the fascination for the bomb is just as well an inherited property. If the traumas of your ancestors can nestle in your core, why not the sound of whining bullets?
Women, on the other hand, forget wars. Women hate wars. Women do not think of wars, at least, not the strategic or technical side, until they are in the middle of it. Except Marjolein Faber. He probably has set up a Maginot line in a miniature in her sewing room in a miniature.
But in recent weeks the men around us probably think a little less often about the Roman Empire, and more often of the big now.
I find myself at tables where my male conversation partners discuss the possible threat as young Churchills. The meticulous adding of the troop powers of Poland and Germany suddenly no longer appears to be no more spielerei, certainly not because it could then be concluded that Russia has nothing to crumble in the milk. Do we also knew that the only, fully self -sufficient army in the world that is of France? Quite an advantage! And that Trump overestimates his own equipment?
They discuss who they will include in their resistance group (people who have something bastard and icy) and at the end of the evening they are singing ‘Le Boudin’ of the Foreign Legion, a slow killing march, who scares the enemy of miles away.
Not all men find reassurance in strategy. There are also pacifists. Men who say that they don’t have the circus of the first trump once again controlled their lives. Men who, since the humiliation of Zelensky, send advertisements from Vastgoed in Bali to their friends, to make it clear that they will not stay here if things really collapse.
And then there is a third category: the morally indignant shouts
And then there is a third category: the morally indignant screamers. Everyone who is at the feet explain them responsible for the state of the world. The left-wing Slapjanuses, the left-wing hardliners, the right-wing secret, the right-wing non-Zo-Striekemerds, the mother of Rutger Bregman: everyone except herself, brought us to the edge of this abyss.
And although the chance of a earth war is of course still not great, all these men have recently thought of their backs, which has become weekly through all that sitting work. And on their soft hands. And how they might run, but tigers still be difficult. They wonder if, if their lives take a different turn, they are well prepared. Are they sharp enough? Are they not too spoiled? In mind they carefully outline the role they hoped to never have to play.
A disturbing spectacle for women. As if we are losing them a bit to the enemy, even in mind.
Sarah Sluimer writes a column every week. She is the author of books, essays and plays.