If Bush can wage a war on an emotion, in this case, the Global War on Terror, then I can wage my own war on an emotion. I have chosen, therefore, to wage a Global War on Covetousness. Covetousness is, when you think about it, a much more damaging emotion than mere terror. I mean, people spend perfectly good money on scary movies and at amusement parks in order to feel terror, but marketing departments have to actually spend their own money to get people to covet. Terror is fleeting, and, aside from maybe a few flashbacks, is over in a few minutes or a few days. But covetousness is insidious, getting into your head to the point that it becomes a veritable lifestyle of insatiation.
I thought about waging a Global War on Cheekiness, but I kind of like cheekiness, so that would have been a bit difficult to justify–not that a lack of good reason has ever stopped anyone from waging Global Wars, especially these now-a-go-go wars on Global Emotions.
It’s a wonderful idea, really, and I’m sure Freud would have wished he could have thought of it, would he have lived through this era. Instead of theorizing and then talking out your problems, you just find some random country you don’t like and invade, killing 30,000 or so people along the way. There’s really no unpleasant emotional state that killing a few tens of thousands of people won’t make better, no matter your actual psycho-social or economic position.
I also considered a Global War on Joy; it’s such a frivolous emotion, or a Global War on
Contentment, since it’s bad for capital investment, but the current Global War on Terror seems to have killed off those emotions pretty handily anyway.
No, the Global War on Covetousness is a good idea not just because covetousness is yet another annoying and inconvenient emotion we’d do well to dispose of, but also, if we do away with covetousness, there will be no need for a Global War on Terror at all.