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War is now a media choice we opt into. Most of us opted out.

Welcome to Seems Fine? A re-brand of this publication. Where I look at the world from the experience of a soon to be father of two, doing laundry and writing novels in a basement in Delco. Who isn’t angry or cynical, but can’t quite make sense of the world today.

As a late thirties dad, I’ve soaked up the 90s nostalgia over the last few years. It was a blissfully simple time. Before the internet, social media, and the attention economy forever changed the human experience.

During the Winter Olympics, I asked my therapist if his twelve year old was obsessed with it. He said, not really, they couldn’t even find what channel it was on. Kids in the 90s? We fucking crushed the olympics. Everybody watched it. Everybody talked about it.

When the country or the world is all running on the same heartbeat, we call it monoculture. The sociology term for when the majority of a culture pays attention to the same things, especially when given limited options. Current events, sports, television shows, and songs. It’s often said that the US had a monoculture from the 1950s to the mid 2000s, before the internet created massive cultural fragmentation.

Throughout history, war was almost certainly a monocultural event. Entire societies pivoted to support a war effort. The late 60s and early 70s are inextricably linked to the war in Vietnam, thousands of miles away. It informed music, art, literature. Everyone had an opinion about it. It played out on the TV every night in homes.

I was a part of the 9/11 generation. I remember where I was and what it looked like on TV. It was all anyone talked about, for a while. America went to war as a direct result of it, and everybody talked about that war too.

I went to West Point for a number of reasons, but one of them was simple patriotic duty. I wanted to do my part. I didn’t graduate or serve, but maybe having a lot of friends in the military makes me feel more aware of our foreign policy.

Our nation is at war right now. Well some form of war at least.

And it turns out, half the fucking globe is. Even Cambodia, where I lived for two years, is fighting with neighboring Thailand. There is a lot of conflict out there.

To be sure, there are segments of the population obsessing about us quietly taking on half the Middle East. Flipping between headlines that don’t really say whats happening.

As i’ve moved through life over the last few weeks, I’ve realized most of the silent majority in the middle, just isn’t talking about it. I don’t hear about it anywhere I go, and if I do, it’s at best a weird second comment during small talk after we’ve covered the weather. “So like, Iran, huh?”…”Yeah, gas, right?”

I’m happy we aren’t rationing sugar as a nation or sending 50% of our workforce to make munitions. Or re-starting the draft. But can we take a second and acknowledge how strange it is that in today’s world, war is something we can opt-out of?

The minute I made a decision to stop deliberately seeking out updates on the subject, it just sort of disappeared from my world.

Our nation is at war, as long as we choose to engage in news about war. Outside of that, most people are just hype that it’s spring and little league is starting again.

We watched this happen in real-time with our last major war, which shockingly enough, lasted two decades. By the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the monoculture faded away, people were low-key surprised we were even still there when we ‘abruptly pulled out’.

I tried to get caught up last night. But the update was behind a news paywall. I quietly decided to continue watching a spicy season of Below Deck Down Under on Bravo with my wife instead.

And if you want to opt-out of Seems Fine? Feel free to do that too.