The Foam Sword Theory of Civilization

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Warriors have always been like lobotomized children with expensive toys and a note from God saying it was all right to break things.

This is the terrible secret behind military history. Strip away the bronze helmets, cavalry plumes, medals, banners, trumpets and patriotic oil paintings and you eventually arrive at three lunatics in a field beating one another with sticks while everybody else stands around cheering.

Cesare Borgia understood this perfectly. He had the wardrobe for it. Velvet, fur, gold chains, boots suitable for kicking down the doors of minor Italian principalities. He could enter a room looking like Christmas had joined organized crime.

Machiavelli was different. He was the kid standing behind the playground fence taking notes.

Interesting, he would think. Cesare has hit Leonardo six times with the red foam sword and now controls the lemonade table. This tells us something important about government.

Leonardo, meanwhile, had already forgotten the war and was examining the sword.

“What is this remarkable substance?”

“Foam, Leonardo.”

He squeezed it thoughtfully.

“Could it fly?”

“No.”

“Could we attach wings?”

And that was the Renaissance.

Civilization likes to pretend warfare is an adult occupation. Generals use arrows on maps. Kings employ words like honor, destiny and strategic necessity. Historians arrive afterward and put Roman numerals beside everything.

But underneath the vocabulary lives the same magnificent idiot impulse:

YOU STAND OVER THERE AND I WILL HIT YOU WITH THIS.

The miracle of LARPing is that somebody finally removed the corpses.

Give Borgia a foam sword and suddenly the whole machinery becomes obvious. Nobody needs Romagna. Nobody needs artillery. Nobody has to poison a cardinal or throw somebody into the Tiber. You need a grassy field, three shields, several ridiculous costumes and a woman at a folding table keeping score.

Perhaps this is what diplomacy has been missing.

Imagine Napoleon at Waterloo being handed a blue foam saber.

Hit Wellington three times above the knee and Belgium is yours until dinner.

Caesar crosses the Rubicon carrying a pool noodle.

Genghis Khan conquers Eurasia with something manufactured for twelve dollars and clearly marked NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER THREE.

The historians would be furious, but civilization might survive.

And there they are in Florence: Borgia charging, Machiavelli calculating, Leonardo laughing and swinging green foam through the Tuscan sunlight while the crowd roars.

For one glorious afternoon the warrior has been reduced to his essential form:

a delighted child,

badly supervised,

running across a field shouting,

I GOT YOU!