Sandwich Wars

We live at a point in History in which very little is happening. I do not of course mean that nothing is actually happening, but that nothing much is Happening in the grander scheme of things, in History. Politics is more or less dead, it has been reduced to the management of a creaking Capitalist-Statist ship- it has become a matter of engineering, rather than architecture. Religion has not been a driver of History, in anything other than a conservative sense, for some time and across the UK and Europe at least it is dwindling- church attendance is down to 15% of the UK population (going once a month at least), and 33% of the population positively identify themselves as Atheists/Agnostics. While Inequality is vast there is little desire or will to do anything about it, and the cause of Equality over the 20th Century- equal rights for women, ethnic and other minorities- has more or less played itself out.

We in the West have also got increasingly little to really worry about, even though we try hard. 'Communism' as a major threat has been and gone. 'Terrorism', whilst it may create a good explosion and a few deaths every so often, is not the multi-headed global empire that we were so keen to believe in to make us feel alive. China, and India, are only really a 'threat' in terms of economic competition, but we are by and large quite well ahead of them in advanced industries, and so really we only have ourselves to blame, or worry about, if the financial system collapses or we let the rest catch up with us.

The problem with nothing really happening though is that it leaves us with a nagging sense of a kind of existential void- we go to work (if we've still got a job), we go on strike, we try to make more money (if we can or have still got a job), we compete a bit, we shack up and reproduce, we go shopping, watch a bit of Telly and if we are lucky go on a bit of a holiday, or to an art gallery. It is fine, but it is a bit boring.

One way to entertain oneself in such circumstances is to pick some arbitrary things that one believes in very strongly, fundamentally, and in reflection some other beliefs that one dislikes, or hates, very much and believes are completely wrong. Much of the Left-Right 'debate' seems to operate in this way, as a kind of sport, on the whole imagining the opposition, or blowing up some part of their beliefs into a monster, and then doing battle with it. Whether it be abortion, gays, women, the family, religion, God, the state, the free market or what have you it seems that certain sorts of people, and groups, are well practised at working themselves up into such an imagined frenzy, on the Left or Right or other axis, that they can create an endless friction, and sense of being alive, almost out of thin air.

In this way, rather cleverly, the various protagonists create a kind of sport, and manage to transfix each other, and an audience, in the playing out of the sport. The Reds and the Blues can thus absolutely hate one another, want to annihilate one another, but tacitly of course each requires the other to play the game. If either team walked off the pitch, with the other one shouting at themselves or thin air, then the game would be up. Take atheists and theists, for example. Most normal people of either kind just go about their business, probably unaware of who is what, as it doesn't matter very much, other than to themselves. But there is a certain kind of atheist who is desperate to rail against religion at the slightest opportunity, and equally there is a type of warlike theist who sees non-believers everywhere and who is keen to bring up the matter of God, and how wrong atheists are, at every possible opportunity. Both though have more in common  than the atheists and theists who go about their business, and the warlike, threatened or evangelical atheist/theist needs the other to survive, to play their particular sport.

Following this logic I would suggest a new kind of War- the Sandwich War. Indeed it has already been tried in New York, something to do with Pastrami vs. Cheese. But this was no doubt a joke, a bit tongue in cheek. Ironic wars though do not work. If football was played in an ironic fashion, as if everyone really knew that it was a bit silly and a waste of time, then it wouldn't have survived for more than an afternoon. The key to inventing such sports, in the absence of anything really happening, is to convince yourself, and your 'enemy', that what you are doing, the fight you are engaged in, is absolutely, fundamentally important and central not only to your life, and their life, but the lives of everyone, to History and Society itself.

The New Yorkers, with their Pastrami vs. Cheese, made it trite, silly. What is needed is a new found belief in certain Sandwich fundamentals, a fundamentalist Sandwich movement. I believe that there are already emergent elements in this blog that could point the way to this new, overly-serious movement. The Sandwich and the culture it represents, in its fundamental form, is under threat from many, often foreign, pretenders- the Burger, the Hotdog, the Post-Modern Sandwich, the Pork Bun, the Panninni, the Weekend Leisure Market Dry Cured Meat and Ciabatta thing, the Club Sandwich, the Office Sandwich. If we do not act soon the Sandwich will have been eroded by these evil terrorists to such a degree that it will no longer exist in its pure form. It is of course no accident that these terroristic Sandwich pretenders are on the whole foreign- often American, sometimes Continental, often infected with an ideology of Capitalism, in its work or leisured forms. We must strike now and strike fast at these cultural cancers. You are either with us or against us in this fight, and if you aren't with us then we don't like you.