keyword: tolerance, title: doomed to repetition in misc. flash fiction

It started innocuously enough but the lead-up to a war always begins a great distance away from where the situation ends in bloodshed. The Great War didn’t start with the assassination of some royal heir, after all, it began in a tangle of mutual-defense treaties no nation ever thought they’d need enforce, collapsing into years of trench-based horrors where only corpse-rats found profit. The Second World War didn’t start with a failed painter discovering his oratory skills, it began with the treaty ending the First One turning out so punitive the desperate conditions that ensued left Germany ripe field for the rise of fascism. The Third War was no different, of course.

“Gl.A.D.Le.” the Gluten Anti-Defamation League, was originally just a tossed-off publicity stunt by a team of wheat-industry lobbyists, an in-joke more than anything. The rise of Celiac Disease awareness and the knee-jerk aversion to gluten by reactionary hypochondriacs trying to lay claim to the newest ailment, had all hurt business a bit, it just seemed like a clever response at the time.

With the internet, though, all cleverness goes awry, and this was no different. People chose sides between gluten intolerance and gluten tolerance quickly, first in ironic fashions to go along with the obvious gag, pretending to be strident, even militaristic about their own wheat consumption. Before long, however, those crazy enough to want to take angry sides about anything at all took sides for real. On top of that, some who’d once declared satiric hate of “the other side” proved to believe it all for real, those earlier ironies merely mechanisms of self-defense in case they were called out on their stupidity. Both arguments, for and against, somehow became movements.

It all spiraled out of control after that. Others followed suit, smelling blood in the water, smelling money in the blood. The dairy industry took up against the lactose intolerance with their National Association of American Cheese Producers, opening yet a second ideological schism up. Violent protests ensued, clashes in streets, one dietary preference or allergy after the other forming their own militia, first in America, soon all around the world. The International Raisin Army, I.R.A. was particularly scorched-Earth in their tactics but were soon outdone by the house-to-house terrorist tactics of the P.L.O., the People for the Liberation of Olives.

Brother fought brother, mother fought son, the whole planet erupted into internecine conflicts that escalated into interwoven global conflicts. The Bomb was dropped for broccoli, genocide waged in defense of ganache. The thing was, though it all started as lark, the whole matter was as arbitrary as killing over ethnicity or faith, landgrab or natural resource. Gluten intolerance was as reasonable as any other stated “reason” we’ve had for wars, in the end.

By the time the treaties were finally signed, the alimentary debates banned from discourse, over a fifth of the world population was dead and, despite the monumental tragedy of it all, one must certainly admit: it was one hell of a food-fight.