He’d not done so well at university. His fellow students considered him “unserious” in spite of the fact that they all flocked enthusiastically to the pub each evening to hear his witty statements about everything from love to war. In fact, his concealed periods of depression were probably exactly because he failed in both. The former undoubtedly because of his poor looks and the latter because there just weren’t any wars going on in which one could succeed.

So John Lyly finagled his degree from Oxford then raced as quickly as he could into a fancy residence in London’s Savoy more or less courtesy of The Church from whom his relatives had achieved their privilege.
His first novel, “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578),” was a roaring success. John Lyly became England’s most important writer of the age. The so important English word, euphemism, derives from his body of work. So also the phrase:

“All is fair in love and war.”

There have been 8 genocides in Rwanda in my life time: eight times that Hutus slaughtered Watutsis, or vice versa, in episodes that make October 7th pale in comparison. The last – and most horrific – was in 1994. Since 1994 Rwanda has accomplished nearly unbelievable advancements in education, health and overall enterprise. Rwanda now has a per capita GDP that is 8 times what it was in 1994.

More importantly, next April will mark 30 years of absolutely no political violence. There is also virtually no crime. This year Rwanda’s average life span exceeded every other sub-Saharan African country, edging out South Africa which had led much of the continent for years.

Rwanda also exceeds in other areas: There is no freedom of expression. It’s so dangerous to criticize the music played on the state radio station that you can be jailed indefinitely for doing so. There’s no true capitalism, but a version like China’s that relaxes controls only proportionate to the size of the investment. Traveling for Rwandan citizens is ridiculously perilous, just as it was for those captive under the old Soviet Union. And those who criticize the regime who do manage to get out – as in the old Soviet Union and its offspring today’s Russia – are often murdered abroad.

If current international law were applied retroactively, without doubt the greatest war criminal on earth would be Harry S. Truman (the Atomic Bombing). Close seconds would be F.D.R. and Churchill (the Dresden apocalypse).

Ranking way above Benjamin Netanhayu or Yahya Sinwar would be Dick Cheney and George W. Bush (Guantanamo tortures and indiscriminate bombings in Afghanistan). Right in there with Netahayu and Sinwar would be Bill Clinton (Sudan factory bombing), and probably most American presidents and their administrations not to mention tens if not hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers.

All is fair in love and war. The war to end all wars is a fine phrase but it’s never happened and the best evidence we have that it could work are places like Rwanda.

History’s chart is very simple: The top of the line bends exponentially upwards while the bottom moves incrementally upwards. The gap widens. The Power of Control is kept at the Top. The power of Defiance is reserved for the Bottom.

The Top justifies its control with the responsibility to suppress barbarianism. The bottom’s frustration finally snaps, and they become exactly what the Top claims they are: barbarians. The relationship is solidified.

Yesterday in a fascinating local conversation about the Israel/Hamas conflict I brought up the massacres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Someone legitimately asked if reflexively, didn’t I think that WWII ended well?