Of course, we know some events begin beyond our immediate sight: the explosion of a star in a distant galaxy, the mutation of a gene sequence, whatever is happening right behind you right now. Some events also begin beyond our immediate understanding. In 1981, when doctors in this country began seeing the strange illness compromising people’s immune systems, they did not understand it to be the global health crisis it would become. On December 26, 2004, although the indigenous peoples of the lands surrounding the Indian Ocean were aware of what it meant to see the ocean recede from the shore, very few of the other inhabitants of those lands or the tourists understood it was a sign to run for the hills; nearly a quarter-of-a-million were killed that day when a tsunami struck eleven countries.

     There have been events that we did not understand were the beginning of war. It was not difficult for Americans to comprehend it meant war when the Confederates bombarded our army’s fort in South Carolina in 1861, or when Japan bombed our naval base in Hawaii in 1941. In 1914, this country did not understand it would mean the deaths of more than 38 million people – including more than 100,000 Americans – when a 19-year-old militant in Bosnia assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Even the war that ensued from that assassination was not seen to be the prelude it was; issues unsatisfactorily resolved left resentments that rose to the level of war again in 1939, just 21 years after the previous one had ended. Over 400,000 Americans were killed that time; over 60 million people died worldwide, 3% of the planet’s human population.

     Did we know it meant war following Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on New York City in 2001? It is doubtful. 9/11, like Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor, was an in-your-face attack; we knew there was a need for a response, but did 9/11 lead us to understand that, because of the actions of a nebulous organization, we would invade two countries that never attacked us? Did we realize American servicemembers would still be dying in those countries nearly two decades later?

     The concern here is not the wars we have fought or are fighting, but the one many Americans do not seem to understand we now are in. It is as if we are like characters in a science fiction movie where we are moving so slowly it appears time has stopped and we are frozen in place while the story’s villains move among us at normal speed, taking advantage of the fact that we are unaware not only of their presence but of our own immobility. Rather than have us watch aghast as Boeing 767 jetliners full of people smash into skyscrapers full of people, our present adversary prefers stealth. Using the subterfuge of cyberspace, they take advantage of our internal civic discord and division to sow more. We may be in a time when we will need the equal of Lincoln or a Roosevelt and we have Trump, a man who has been warned we are under attack, but who cravenly refuses to either adequately address or even acknowledge this fact. Trump is aided in this abdication of his responsibility by a political base that sees the enemy the same as he does, as no enemy at all, as maybe a political ally even. After all, the enemy did help get Trump elected.

     It was reported that the enemy’s leader once called Trump “brilliant.” Translators (and, therefore, Trump) initially thought he meant brilliant as in “bright” or “smart,” not understanding that the specific word he used was meant to convey the idea of bright as  “shiny” or “flashy,” an apt moniker for the man. The leader himself later clarified his earlier comment, stating that he thinks Trump is “flamboyant.” So, let us not assume or pretend that the enemy’s intent was to get Trump elected. No, putting Trump in place was not the goal. Generally, they simply wanted to weaken what threatens them: secular, democratic civil societies that have free and fair elections, independent judiciaries and an unfettered press. Specifically, the goal was the damage sought by the leader himself, a man whose vindictiveness set in motion a plan to do political harm to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who – in her role as Secretary of State – had dared to point out the problems found in Russia’s presidential election, thereby seeming to question the leader’s legitimacy. Assuming she would win the White House, he was intent on having her legitimacy questioned as well. It was more luck than skill that made his efforts to harm us so spectacularly successful here, a place so entrenched in partisanship that the portion of the electorate enamored of Trump does not believe in or care about that success.

     Here is a thought experiment involving 9/11 that might give more of us more of a perspective on what has happened to us. Imagine if — on that fateful September morning – only one plane had felled only one of New York City’s Twin Towers. Would our outrage have been any less? Suppose, afterward, that circumstances began indicating the possibility there were Americans in the still-standing tower who may have knowingly or unknowingly aided the plane’s hijackers. To what level would our outrage have risen? If what American intelligence agencies have found is true, the intrusion into the 2016 campaign for the presidency seems little if any different from the scenario just presented. To play that scenario out, half the people in this country on 9/11 would have felt no outrage because they didn’t particularly care for the fallen tower in the first place – or for the people inside. If you can imagine the degree of disgust and distrust most Americans would feel about compatriots who either in some way assisted Al-Qaeda or were content with what it accomplished, you may have some idea of the feelings running through the citizenry following the attacks on our political processes and the lackluster response.

     Those attacks were not unique to us. The enemy has tentacles it extends wherever it perceives a need.  Today’s historians can trace the start of World War I to the murderous act of a Balkan teenager. World War II began when Germany attacked Poland. Can the genesis of the current, low-grade world war be so easily pinpointed? Could it have been in 2008 when the enemy invaded its neighbor, Georgia, or in 2014 when it invaded its neighbor, Ukraine? (Those were no cyber invasions; they were the old-fashioned kind). Will it be said that the war began in recent years with the enemy’s interference in the internal affairs of France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy and Germany?

     Those who know we are in a war are understandably reluctant to charge headlong into battle. There are no time-tested treaties or protocols in place governing the rules of cyberwarfare and, like the mutual destruction guaranteed by the use of nuclear arms, there might be formidable consequences resulting from battles fought in cyberspace. Ukraine got just a taste of this in 2015 when, two days before Christmas, the enemy took down part of that country’s power grid. Shortly thereafter, as was reported by David Sanger in The New York Times, the Obama administration “…warned the nation’s power companies, water suppliers and transportation networks that sophisticated cyberattack techniques… could easily be turned on them.”

     Because Trump publicly admires rather than admonishes the enemy’s leader, it leaves people hoping that others in government who understand what is happening are acting accordingly. But, in war or peace, governments need the support of the governed if there is to be any hope of success. Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, in an interview on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” pointed out that “…Russia has been, sort of, gathered around Putin, who has said Russia is at war with America and has been saying that for basically the last four or five years.” An overarching question for us is, “Can a war be won by those unaware they’re in one?” The answer to that is an easy “No.”