Ringside at WW3

When World War Three finally breaks out, very few of us will know it at the time. We will read a headline about one event, hear a blurb on talk radio about another event, and maybe we’ll get a banner ad in our e-mail about stocking up on good Duracells®. Despite worldwide interconnections and communications, mainstream media will keep us myopic, such that we’ll glimpse only out of context fragments of what is underway at any given time.

Similar to our grandparents in their time, they read snippets about the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and in 1938 on newsreel they watched a prime minister promise “peace in our time” during a rainstorm. In 1939 Time Magazine compared the era’s growing hostilities to those experienced a generation earlier which the publication denominated “World War 1,” thus giving to posterity the sequence by which to count these bouts of global bloodletting. Nevertheless, to people at the time – taking life a day at a time just like us – there was no sure way to tell whether one occurrence was leading into another towards a conflict which would go on to obliterate whole cities under mushroom clouds.

Ninety years later, with governmental and private satellites scanning the earth at regular and frequent intervals, we as citizens are no closer to knowing what is underway in terms of global conflict. We see only what is unfolding now in places like the Middle East, and almost daily it goes from bad to worse. Parachuting Palestinians, to rocket volleys, to political assassinations, to exploding beepers, to hospitals which have a nasty habit of getting in the way of smart-bombs. In Europe we have the major civilian infrastructure of the Nordstream being sabotaged then blamed on and claimed by different countries. In Asia, as recently as today China encircles an island nearby Taiwan during a “live-fire drill” to demonstrate China’s capability for naval blockades. Thus, across the globe, tensions are on the rise, and the United States has stakes in all these theaters of operation.

Are we headed for the big one? Still this is unknown, but you can bet your bottom buck that the Pentagon is not trying to expand Selective Service to include women out of any sense of egalitarianism. But before all women are decked out in khakis, there is at least one duty which would greatly benefit humanity.

Since constitutionally required declarations of war are now dismissed as outmoded, we need a bikini model to walk a ring card before the world so that everyone’s on notice that everyone's fair game in World War Three. Somehow in the age of Instagram and TikTok, this seems like the best way to get the message out rather than a stuffy declaration.

And who knows… maybe a final glance at her will remind us of all the reasons we have not to kill one another.