Foolish Phantoms: A Post-Apocalyptic Epic (The Book of Tribulation: Volume 1)

by Sam Clark

  However, she had to consider the counter-factual; that’s what James had taught her to do since she was a toddler. What if there had been no revolution? What if Napoleon’s commander hadn’t been a casualty at Toulon? What if a fellow Corsican hadn’t been in charge of deciding whom to replace that fallen officer with? If any of those events hadn’t come to pass‌—‌especially the revolution, which thinned the officer ranks tremendously‌—‌Napoleon likely would have had an unremarkable career and retired without ever having distinguished himself. Perhaps, at best, a major when his career ended. Yes, to do great things requires great times. Unfortunately for her, as far as she could tell, she lived in the most unremarkable of times and in the most unremarkable of places.

  It’s all right, Czarina. You still have time. Napoleon hadn’t done much of anything by sixteen, either. Alexander was still a few years from greatness, and Caesar even further. Caesar used to compare himself to Alexander and weep at his shortcomings. Yet he ended up doing all right for himself.

  One day we’ll all leave this bunker. Then I can strike out on my own. And who knows‌—‌maybe there’ll be a need for great women somewhere in the world.

  Stop kidding yourself. It’s an impossible goal.

  Czarina realized how far she had strayed from her appointed task. In an effort to clear the images of glory on the battlefields of Europe from her consciousness, she vigorously shook her head before picking up the discarded Republic with every intention of conquering its contents.

  Socrates – POLEMARCHUS – GLAUCON – ADEIMANTUS

  Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and our companion are already on your way to the city.

  You are not far wrong, I said.

  But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?

  Of course.

  “Who the fuck cares how many you are.” This is bad enough to make me miss Hobbes. Maybe if I read a little Clausewitz it’ll get me in the mood to read. One section, then back to Plato.

  She set Plato aside and walked to her room to retrieve her dog-eared copy of On War, then returned to the desk. She quickly scanned the contents. ‘Book VII Attack’ caught her eye, and she flipped to it and began reading.

  ***

  A shadow passed over the desk, and Czarina looked up.

  “I thought we agreed on Plato, girl,” James said.

  “I read some. It was good.”

  “Oh? And what do you think of what you have read so far?”

  Think, Czarina. Come up with something quick.

  James folded his arms and began tapping his foot. “I’m waiting.”

  “Well… it’s hard to think with you tap-tap-tapping that foot. It’s a deep book, you know. It requires a lot of thought to formulate an adequate synopsis.”

  “Ah, my BS sense is tingling.”

  “Maybe you should have Doc Jones look at that.”

  James laughed. “The only real doctor in this bunker is me. How many pages did you actually read before you ditched it for Clausewitz?”

  “Pages, as in plural? That’s a rather optimistic assumption on your part, professor.”

  James smiled and shook his head. “Sadly, you would have fit in just fine in one of my classrooms, girl. Shall we have a game of chess?”

  Before she could respond, James picked up the board from its resting place on top of the nearest stack of books and placed in the middle of the desk.

  “Well, I suppose I don’t have much of a choice now,” she said.

  “Czarina, you always have a choice. If a thief puts a knife to your neck and says, ‘Your wallet or your life,’ you have choice. Not a very good one, but you are free to choose. If you had paid closer attention when you read Hobbes, you would know that.”

  She responded by making her opening move, king’s pawn to e4.

  “I see you have made your choice,” James said, pulling over another chair and taking a seat.

  The two sat in silence as the opening phase of the game progressed into the middle game. James was the first to speak.

  “Czarina, I know I have said it a thousand times. Hell, I said it to you this very morning, but I am going to keep saying it until you listen. War is the reason we live in this place. You sit, staring at that picture of Napoleon on the wall, thinking about how magnificent it would be to command armies, but war has never done civilization any good.”

  She thought about denying the accusation. However, before she could speak, James beat her to the punch.

  “Do not try to deny it, either. You stare at that thing so hard it’s a wonder your eyes have not gone cross.”

  “I wasn’t going to deny it,” she lied. “What I was going to say was, there have been good wars‌—‌like World War Two. You have to admit fighting Hitler was good for civilization.”

  “Well, let me put it to you this way. Do you remember Stumpy?”

  Remember? How could she forget? Stumpy was an original militia member, dead now. He used to show all the young kids his foot‌—‌or rather, where his foot used to be. He had always said an alligator had bitten it off. It was as disgusting as it was fascinating.

  “Yeah, I remember him.”

  “I am sure you know he did not lose his foot to an alligator; at least, I hope you figured that out. Before he came into the shelter, he was fat. Really, really fat. I do not know how he got into the militia, quite frankly. They had some standards‌—‌but I digress. Anyway, he lost his foot to diabetes. Shortly after we sealed the bunker, his toes started turning blue, then purple, and finally black. He had gangrene. So they cut his foot off to stop the spread, and he lived another thirty-five years or so.

  “Do you know what causes diabetes?”

  “Not really,” she said without looking up from the board.

  “Nor would I expect you to. Diabetes is not one of the perils of the bunker lifestyle. It is primarily caused by poor diet. Of course, this is an oversimplification. Genetics clearly plays a role in the disease, but it needn’t concern us here. Anyway, eat too many refined carbohydrates for too long, and eventually you are likely to get diabetes. If you fail to make any lifestyle changes, you may eventually lose a foot.

  “Now, what can you do to try and avoid diabetes?”

  She looked up and raised an eyebrow.

  “Diet,” James supplied. “Avoid unhealthy foods, and chances are you will not get diabetes in the first place. If you get diabetes and change your diet, the effects of the disease can be mitigated, and you do not get gangrene.”

  “What’s this got to do with World War Two? You remember that’s what we were talking about, right? Are you getting senile, old man? Fegan mentioned his concern for your mental wellbeing today.” Czarina moved her queen. “Check.”

  If James moved his king to h8 to get out of check‌—‌the only place he could safely move it‌—‌she would win on the next turn. If he decided to block her attack with his knight, he would successfully stop her attack, and she would have to go back to the drawing board, but she would keep the initiative.

  James laughed. Czarina wasn’t sure exactly what her grandfather found so funny. Maybe it was a response to her brilliant attack.

  Finally, he stopped laughing. “Yes, that Fegan is a real humanitarian. Senile‌—‌no, not by a long shot. I was getting to the point, before I was so rudely interrupted.”

  James paused to center one of his pawns on its square before continuing. “Fighting Hitler was like cutting off a necrotic limb. A necessary evil, far better than doing nothing. However, it would have been better still to never have had the disease in the first place. Continuing the analogy, diet is both the cause of and solution to diabetes, and political philosophy is‌—‌or maybe ‘was’ is more accurate‌—‌the cause of and solution to war. Think about it: Even the most basic of pre-historic struggles, such as those where one group massacred another over access to drinking water, were likely as not given some moral rationalization by those who carried them out. Bringing it back to the Second World
War, it would have been far better to prevent fascism from taking root, rather than having to cut it out after the fact.

  “It likely would have been easier too, if only a more philosophically prudent path had been followed at the end of the First World War, which coincidently some other diseased ideologies‌—‌imperialism and nationalism‌—‌played a role in. If we get the political philosophy right, it prevents the need for war in the first place.”

  As if to punctuate his point, James swept his rook across the board, knocking over Czarina’s queen. He then picked it up and placed it neatly in line with the other pieces he’d captured, including one bishop, two knights, and two pawns. The match had been relatively even to that point. If anything, she’d had the advantage, having captured both of her grandfather’s bishops, one knight, one rook, and three pawns, but her last move had been a major blunder. She had lost her most powerful piece for no material or positional gain. Unfortunately, she was familiar with this unexpected negative turn of events, as many of their games ended with her making a fatal mistake because she moved too quickly.

  With her chances of winning the game rapidly approaching nil, she shifted her attention to winning the argument. And she’d be damned if she’d blunder it away too. Her first thought was to pick up on genetics, but she hesitated. It seemed too obvious. Here’s this big important causal factor I’m just going to ignore. But what would his next move be if she took the bait? She had his possible response in an instant. He’d argue there was nothing remotely as deterministic in the social sciences as genetics, so it could safely be ignored for the purposes of the analogy. She could counter with the anarchic nature of the international system, but that was exactly what he’d expect her to say. She could see how that would play out easily enough. James would ask, Has the ordering principal of the international system ever been anything other than anarchic? She’d answer no. Then he’d ask, Have there been periods of tremendous upheaval and conflict in the international system? Yes. Have there been long periods of relative peace and prosperity in the international system? Yes. He’d then say something like ‘Anarchy hardly seems deterministic to me, girl; more like a constant that allows actors to pursue policies of war or peace as they see fit. But what do I know, I’m just an old man.’ Checkmate.

  So instead Czarina went with, “Isn’t that a bit idealistic? It’s not possible to get the philosophy right, and trying to just leads to putting off hard decisions until the disease has begun to spread. If people had listened to realists like Pilsudski, Hitler could have been taken out before he rebuilt the German military machine. The costs would have been drastically reduced. It’s like Bismarck said, great political problems are resolved by ‘iron and blood’ and ‘not through speeches and majority decisions.’ You can add philosophy to the list of things that won’t solve political problems. Just look at human history, and you can see this is clearly true.”

  James smiled brightly. “There are several problems with your argument. Would you like me to elucidate them for you?”

  She picked up one of her pawns and moved it without giving it much thought. “Sure. Why not?”

  James slipped fully into his professor persona. He stood and walked to a small whiteboard on the wall, and began writing notes, gesturing with his hands, and projecting his voice as if he were speaking to an auditorium full of people.

  “First, not all dogs bark.”

  “Huh?”

  “Quadrupeds, covered in fur, man’s best friend,” James said with a smile. “Your analysis of human history ignores all the times that states solved their problems peacefully, or never developed problems in the first place‌—‌the dogs that did not bark.”

  James wrote, ‘1) NO BARK,’ on the board. “In many of these instances, shared political norms dictated that violence, or the threat of violence, was inappropriate. Don’t forget, no two mature democracies ever solved the problems between them by resorting to ‘iron and blood.’”

  Czarina began repeatedly running her hand over her stubby hair, as if she could somehow stimulate her brain through friction applied to the skull. “But war is always a possibility in an anarchic system where there is no decision-making authority above sovereign states, and because war is so potentially costly, it deserves more attention than peace.”

  James pointed at her with his marker and said, “Good. That is a valid perspective. However, that is not the same as ‘all political problems must be solved through war,’ which is essentially what you are claiming.”

  She sighed and took her hand from her head. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am. Now, for your second problem.” He turned and wrote a ‘2’ on the board, followed by ‘BIG PROBLEM OF INDUCTION.’

  “Even if every political problem throughout all human history was solved by war‌—‌which we have already established is not the case‌—‌it would not mean all future problems would have to be solved by war.”

  “Wait‌—‌that doesn’t make sense. If I drop a ball a hundred times, I’d be stupid to assume it wouldn’t fall in exactly the same way on time one-oh-one.”

  “Of course. That would be a smart bet. However, there is no logical necessity involved.”

  She began rubbing her head again. “You’ve lost me.”

  “Using an example from the natural sciences, like the effects of gravity on a ball, complicates the picture for reasons we do not need to get into at this point. Let me give you a different example. How many games of chess have we played?”

  She realized she was rubbing her head again and buried her hands in her pockets to keep them from returning of their own accord. “I don’t know, maybe a thousand.”

  “And how many times have you beaten me?”

  After a pause of sufficient length to display her displeasure at the line of questioning, she responded, “None.”

  “Now, just because I have beaten you every time we have played so far, does not mean I will beat you every time we play in the future. If it did, there would be no point in us playing. Future outcomes are not foregone conclusions. Simply put, the future does not have to be like the past‌—‌it just often is.”

  She began to understand. Nodding her head slowly, she said, “So even if problems were solved by violence in the past, people could learn to solve them in a more peaceful manner in the future.”

  James walked back over to the chessboard, a big smile still on his face. “Correct. There is hope for you yet. By the way, this will not be the time you beat me at chess.”

  He moved his queen to b2. “Checkmate.”

  Czarina pulled her hands from her pocket and tipped over her king in acknowledgment of defeat number one thousand and one.

  “You know,” James said as he retook his seat, “you had me most of the game.”

  “I am aware.”

  “The problem is you lack patience, girl. Your strategy depended upon me not realizing what you were doing and making a mistake. Putting my own head in the noose, if you will. What was it Thucydides said‌—‌‘In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed…’” James dipped his chin to his chest and peered at her over the top of his glasses.

  Czarina sighed, then said “‘Indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions.’”

  “Ah, good, so you do know the quote. Well I suppose you should, considering you have read the words more times than I; however, you fail to take them to heart. Ironically, by hoping I would make a mistake, it was you who erred. This strategy, if you can call it that, might work against unskilled opponents like your sister. However, it has made you a lazy thinker. Against a skilled opponent, such as myself, you will never have much success if you simply hope they make a mistake.”

  James tapped the board with a bony index finger. “Rather than work through all your possible moves and my potential responses, you pick the first one that might work. You must put the noose around you
r opponent’s neck for them, pull it tight and give them no way out‌—‌defeat them with your mental superiority, as opposed to their own carelessness.”

  She felt her jaw clenching, and it took a great deal of effort for her to force the muscles of her face back into a more relaxed position. The remark stung because deep down she knew it was true, no matter how much she wanted to deny it. She had done the same thing with Winston earlier in the day, simply assuming he would take the first plausible course of action she had thought of.

  With her defeat on the chessboard secured, she searched desperately for some argument she could make to salvage something from the exchange.

  “Even if war isn’t how all political problems are settled,” she began slowly, to try and prevent her mouth from out-pacing her mind, “it doesn’t mean political philosophy is the solution, and your own arguments suggest that when philosophies differ, war is the likely result, such as in World War Two. And even when actors share a philosophy, like imperialism or nationalism, it can lead to war.”

  “Touché, young lady. Very good.”

  Not satisfied with the small victory, she decided to press her luck. After all, she didn’t lie awake at night thinking about Napoleon’s victories at Eckmühl or Smolensk. No, she thought about Austerlitz and Jena. About how if she’d had command at Leipzig or Waterloo, things might have turned out differently for the Grand Army. She did nothing small. She would finish off James’s pro-philosophy argument using political philosophy, albeit her own brand of political philosophy: realism.

  She began emulating James’s professorial delivery as she pressed forward. “Further, I must point out again that your argument is far too idealistic. It’s pointless to think about how society ought to be organized. As Machiavelli said, ‘Better to go to the truth of the matter than to its imagination.’ He specifically chastises the use of ‘imagined republics’ like Plato’s, because‌—‌and I quote‌—‌‘how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation.’”