Satire

I picked up a book today from the shelf by Ambrose Bierce called "Civil War Stories". Ever the biting satirist, this was where he chose to set his latest stories.

I finished half of the(very short) first story and set the book down. I felt uncomfortable. I couldn't take his distortion of the Union to fit his point, though I couldn't see what that was yet. I started to think and wonder if another war would affect me the same way.

The Union was made up of people who were flawed and, in some cases, just as bigoted as the Confederates. But the soldiers were still heroes who ended slavery and gave or risked their lives in the process.

I tried to think of other wars since the Civil War and blanked for a second. American education concerning history is very Anglocentric. But what wars would be the background for satire? The Ugandan genocide? Only the ones in which we had simply stretched out our hand like superpowers and taken what wasn't ours.