We live in times where things can get much worse, so we fear far more than living horrors. We fear what has happened in the past and what is primed to happen again. This goes, one way or another, for communists, liberals, and fascists alike. The war must end because of the toll it is taking on the world, but it will continue because the die is cast. Even if peace talks and mediation prevails the structures that fostered this conflict will likely remain and the sentiments that the conflict has exacerbated will not relent. I’m afraid there is no rhetoric, and no disposition, that can stop things from getting worse and we don’t have the social infrastructure to try if it could. Indeed, we are no longer crossing the brook by feeling for the stones because the waters have risen much too high.