War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
I have been hesitant to write about the escalation with Iran because sometimes it feels like shouting into a void. This administration has decided that we are going to war preemptively, and the explanation offered to the American public, as articulated by Marco Rubio, was essentially that we had to go to war because someone else was going to go to war. It was the kind of circular, upside-down logic that would make Alice dizzy.
Apparently, Israel signaled it would strike Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu leaned in. Donald Trump followed. And just like that, we are told this is necessary, urgent, inevitable — even though not long ago we were assured that Iran’s capabilities had been neutralized and that they were no longer a meaningful threat. Somehow, in less than a year, the narrative flipped. Yesterday they were dismantled; today they are existential.
It is difficult to have a serious civic conversation when leaders will look directly into a camera and contradict themselves without blinking. It is midnight, and they insist the sun is shining. What are you going to do about it?
What I know is this: working-class people die in wars. Poor people die in wars. Civilians die in wars. And when it is over, very little changes for the people who paid the highest price.
I was watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution recently, and something settled into me in a way it never had before. The Revolutionary War is sold to us as a story of freedom, liberty, and destiny. But when you look closely, you see how elites persuaded farmers, blacksmiths, and laborers to fight for an abstract freedom that primarily benefited wealthy landowners. It was rich colonists seeking independence from other rich men across the Atlantic. The rhetoric was universal; the spoils were not.
Near the end of the documentary, a soldier wrote home after victory had been declared. He reflected on the men he had fought beside — officers and enlisted, wealthy and poor — and he wrote that once they dispersed and returned to their separate lives, they would be as separate “as if divided by the grave.” That line stopped me cold.
As if divided by the grave.
Even in that moment of supposed unity, he understood the truth. Whatever brotherhood existed on the battlefield would dissolve the second they went home. The class divide would reassert itself. The generals would return to their estates. The farmers would return to debt and dirt. They were never truly equals; war had merely suspended reality.
And here we are again.
Upper-class, wealthy Americans beat the drums of patriotism, invoke fear, stir xenophobia, wrap themselves in flags, and send working-class people to risk life and limb. They speak of honor while ensuring their own families are insulated from sacrifice. They manufacture urgency and call it courage.
Working-class white Americans, in particular, are often mobilized through grievance and cultural panic, convinced they are defending something sacred, when in truth they remain separated “as if by the grave” from the very elites directing the action. They are materially closer to working-class Black families, Latino families, immigrant families than they will ever be to the billionaire class. Yet the manipulation persists because it works.
And then there is the double standard.
As a Black woman who wrote an entire book about performance evaluation and racialized scrutiny in the workplace, I cannot ignore what it feels like to watch this unfold. When Barack Obama was in office, every gesture was parsed, every word examined. If he appeared too casual, he was unserious. If he was too measured, he was weak. If he hesitated, he was incompetent. His use of the military was questioned relentlessly, his legitimacy doubted constantly.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who avoided military service through deferments available to the wealthy and has reportedly referred to fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers,” can ramble about gold curtains and White House décor in the middle of discussing military action and face little sustained outrage. He can appear disheveled, meandering, unfocused — and it does not become a referendum on his fitness in the way a single misplaced gesture would have been for Obama.
If you want to understand competency checking, do not only look at the office conference room. Look at the Oval Office. Look at the difference in standards. Look at who must be flawless and who can fumble through history.
Psychically and emotionally, that disparity is not abstract. It is exhausting. It mirrors what happens every day in workplaces across this country, where Black professionals must overprepare, overperform, and overprove, while others are granted latitude as a birthright.
And now we are told there is a war.
Families tonight may learn that their children are not coming home. There will be folded flags and solemn speeches. There will be rhetoric about sacrifice. There will be appeals to unity. But unity forged in war does not erase the grave that divides classes once the fighting stops.
I find myself wondering whether those who bear the brunt will continue to believe in the leaders who sent them. History suggests many will. The human capacity to cling to narrative, even when it harms us, is powerful.
War. What is it good for?
If history is any guide, it is good for consolidating power, redirecting public attention, and enriching those already insulated from risk. It is rarely good for the farmer, the mechanic, the teacher, or the soldier’s mother waiting by the phone.
Over the next few days, I will share reflections from my trip to Washington, D.C., and my time at the Library of Congress. But tonight, I could not stay silent.
Because when we are told that war is inevitable, that it is necessary, that it is righteous, we would do well to remember that letter from long ago. Once the drums stop and the uniforms come off, the distance between those who ordered it and those who endured it will remain as wide as the grave.
Thanks for joining the live today. If you want to learn more about race and develop your own racial literacy, consider joining the Why We Talk About Race: A Racial Literacy Workshop. Join the workshop here:
