Given our military might and the widespread belief that our grandest actions are divinely sanctioned, we’re convinced that we can settle any argument by force. And when we resort to force, we expect our victories to be spectacular and absolute, even if the goal is vast and improbable, such has the utter annihilation of our enemies.
For decades we’ve boasted that we can bomb any land into a parking lot. And what is a parking lot? A featureless expanse that leaves nothing to doubt.
To any expect any other outcome to our actions—for example, to anticipate adaptations from our opponents, evolving circumstances, “quagmires,” and other undesirable outcomes—would be to adopt dialectical thinking, a mode favored during the Cold War by Marxists and Hegelians, a tribe over whom we claim yet another of those victories we consider absolute.
For too many Americans, complexity is error. We can blast the shit out of anything, and the next thing, and the next. Especially in the face of intractable problems, bludgeoning is the true American argumentum.