I do not know what will result from this war and the universal conflict that is approaching, but man can no longer be more vile than he is. These were the words of León Felipe as he left Spain on his way to exile. I also don't know what will come of the war in the Ukraine or the universal conflict that they say is coming. Nobody knows. But perhaps we are all degrading ourselves by familiarizing ourselves with images that we decided not to publish for nothing. We watch television and open the newspapers and find pictures of mangled corpses. We contemplate mass graves into which people's bodies are thrown like garbage bags without a response, without a prayer, without a tear. We have even seen soldiers shoot two civilians in cold blood in the back. And it does not seem that there is anyone who is moved or orders to stop that cruelty.
They are the images that can be expected from a war. It is the aesthetics of war, just as there is an aesthetics of destruction: the bombed cities, the skeletons of the buildings that remain standing, the burned constructions are contemplated by the leaders who visit Ukraine with the same gesture of astonishment with which they would contemplate an architectural work. The invader may go to sleep every night satisfied with having razed a town. Some construction company makes numbers of the business that will involve rebuilding all that. There is always an old woman looking for something to eat or walking disoriented among rubble that still smells of gunpowder. Severe poverty, hunger and dramatic loneliness also have their aesthetics.
The chronicler was thinking about that terror when he discovered an informative content in a general information newspaper. It was a ranking that they titled as follows: "The best armored vehicles in the world" and inside, in effect, came the most valued tanks on the market, with a detailed description of their qualities and technological advances. The ultimate in destroying and killing machines. I suppose that soon the best machine guns and the best assault rifles will be published or there will be prizes for the most effective snipers. They say that the war is causing economic crisis and humanitarian disasters. The truth is that it is creating a culture and an aesthetic called to create more war and more cruelty.
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