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For the bulk of America, the concept of a professional military isn't just acceptable, it is optimal, as it removes the burdens of what war really is from the masses. As I've often pointed out, .5% of our population fight 100% of our wars, and this arrangement allows most people to carry on with their daily lives without there ever needing to be a single iota of further thought about it.
However, war is sold to the American public as this clean sterile video game like endeavor, such as nearly all war footage has shown since Desert Storm. Bombs falling down an air shaft of a building from an infrared camera. Or crowds of women crying and the stock photo of a bombed out car, thoroughly devoid of the truly messy stuff.
Yet, it goes beyond this, and just the other day I caught this TV commercial that pretty much sums up why so many are so eager and desire conflict. It is in large part because of this.
This depiction where you get your own avatar, your own sig on your uber cool RPG, and duke it out with accountants, housewives, and plumbers. However unlike the reality, there is no pause, and there is no "start over".
Having watched this program the other night, I can only recommend it as something every high school student should watch with their parents. Incredibly moving.
I guess Americans have not had a war at home for too long, they don't remember what it's like to have their own country in ruins. Just think of the fuss about 9/11...
That entire glorification of power, weapons, and the military is alien to most Europeans for instance, probably because of our history.
I guess Americans have not had a war at home for too long, they don't remember what it's like to have their own country in ruins. Just think of the fuss about 9/11...
That entire glorification of power, weapons, and the military is alien to most Europeans for instance, probably because of our history.
Games are but one means, movies are another. When you sell the youth on this kind of game atmosphere and then present sterilized war footage in video and photo form, it reinforces this notion that its all a glorious game. Another reason we do not show our war dead returning home with any frequency, as it would ruin the mystique.
The concept of the professional army in this case helps perpetuate the moonshine as it is not a shared experience. At least with a draft, then nearly everyone has a stake in the game.
At least with a draft, then nearly everyone has a stake in the game.
No one over age 25, and women (unless you had a child of draft age) would have a stake in the game if there was a return to the draft. Add in the fact that only 10-12% of folks between 18-29 vote, I see this as a very unfair playing field.
A select few decide when we go to war, and our most precious commodity; young adults pay the price for it.
If they ever bring back the draft I want it to be for folks
35-50
For the bulk of America, the concept of a professional military isn't just acceptable, it is optimal, as it removes the burdens of what war really is from the masses. As I've often pointed out, .5% of our population fight 100% of our wars, and this arrangement allows most people to carry on with their daily lives without there ever needing to be a single iota of further thought about it.
However, war is sold to the American public as this clean sterile video game like endeavor, such as nearly all war footage has shown since Desert Storm. Bombs falling down an air shaft of a building from an infrared camera. Or crowds of women crying and the stock photo of a bombed out car, thoroughly devoid of the truly messy stuff.
Yet, it goes beyond this, and just the other day I caught this TV commercial that pretty much sums up why so many are so eager and desire conflict. It is in large part because of this.
This depiction where you get your own avatar, your own sig on your uber cool RPG, and duke it out with accountants, housewives, and plumbers. However unlike the reality, there is no pause, and there is no "start over".
Having watched this program the other night, I can only recommend it as something every high school student should watch with their parents. Incredibly moving.
Even if there was a draft the system would be "gamed" by the rich, and the privileged just like George W. Bush Jr. joined the Texas Air National Guard but got trained on a fighter jet that would never be deployed in Viet Nam. Or, Bill Clinton using educational deferments to avoid military service. The Viet Nam War was essentially fought by professional officers and NCO's and poor and or blue collar young Americans.
At least with a all volunteer armed forces the people that are their made a choice at one point or another to join.
I certainly hope that everyone that can remembers the draft, and the protests against it. That was a major reason it was gotten rid of in the early 1970s (the last "class" drafted were born in 1953 and drafted in 1972).
One thing that every male born from around 1920 to 1953 shared was the draft. I used to know the numbers but serving in the military was an experience shared by a large number across a couple generations. We now have a professional military which was a major selling point in ending the draft. The result that's being complained about by a couple posters was expected and predicted.
As far as a "select few" deciding to go to war, that's always been the case.
Americans seem to just need virtual violence to feel alive at all. (e.g. docile house wives told me they enjoy gory action flicks because it "makes life more interesting") The eternal boredom of the suburbs and the ghettos.
Then a part of it is good old propaganda. Movies have always been, and the video games increasingly are very propagandistic ("us" vs. "them", "God bless America") Every 'red blooded amercian' just gotta have a bad guy to shoot at.
There is a technological angle to this - a lot of modern war by the US half way accross the world is fought by some folks that are not capable of anyting better, pushing buttons and clicking mouse in some bunker in Oklahoma.
War with blood and personal suffering is becoming more and more remote even for the Americans that enlist.
Remember 9/11? A fairly minor violence relatively on the global scale, or even the ones inflicted by the US on others either in the real world with actual wars that kill 100s of thousands, or virtually in games and movies. It's been about 10 years, and we still go on about that while invading countries with impunity.
The US populace just has no conept of real suffering... (and personally I'm fine with that...), but it's like a wealthy school punk that bullies the weak, will suddenlty become more reflective and humble once beat into a pulp. (China just might do that, but in their clever, not overt, way)
I'm a member of the Y Generation (or borderline, born in 1981, maybe end of the Gen X ... whatever), and I think for most people in my generation war is such an alien concept that we cannot comprehend what it is, but for all the "glorification" and pushing of war upon us, I do not think that it does anything but give a sense to the population that the war we are fighting at one point or another is justified for some reason. It also disconnects them that the media sometimes succeed at shattering. But only rarely.
It reminds me of a movie depiction of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The young corporal had some leave and went back to his hometown, and some dignitaries were asking "How goes the war? Fine upstanding battles, right?" The reality was WWI was like the US Civil War on steroids with machine guns, trench warfare, chemical warfare, and barbed wire and airplanes causing untold death and inhumanity. It wasn't anything glorious.
I do not think that it will "teach" the young to glorify war any more than prior generations retelling stories of "valor" and "heroism" did to their young and our parents and grandparents.
Americans seem to just need virtual violence to feel alive at all. (e.g. docile house wives told me they enjoy gory action flicks because it "makes life more interesting") The eternal boredom of the suburbs and the ghettos.
Your opening point reminded me of a passage I feel is salient to certain fundamental needs in men. In our modern times, we are finding that this isn't even entirely gender specific, which also raises some interesting avenues to explore.
"War, despite suffering and horror, fulfills certain deep-seated needs in men, affords certain releases, offers certain compensations. Men yearn for significance in life, for the thrill of meaning in action, for communion in a common cause, for the test of their fiber, paradoxically for both the affirmation of, and the death of, the self." - Robert Penn Warren, Introduction to Selected Poems of Herman Melville, 1967
Quote:
Originally Posted by eskercurve
I'm a member of the Y Generation (or borderline, born in 1981, maybe end of the Gen X ... whatever), and I think for most people in my generation war is such an alien concept that we cannot comprehend what it is, but for all the "glorification" and pushing of war upon us, I do not think that it does anything but give a sense to the population that the war we are fighting at one point or another is justified for some reason. It also disconnects them that the media sometimes succeed at shattering. But only rarely.
It reminds me of a movie depiction of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The young corporal had some leave and went back to his hometown, and some dignitaries were asking "How goes the war? Fine upstanding battles, right?" The reality was WWI was like the US Civil War on steroids with machine guns, trench warfare, chemical warfare, and barbed wire and airplanes causing untold death and inhumanity. It wasn't anything glorious.
I do not think that it will "teach" the young to glorify war any more than prior generations retelling stories of "valor" and "heroism" did to their young and our parents and grandparents.
One of the key differences in past generations was the intimacy with violence, simply because there was no "virtual" avenues to engage in war, other than through writing and later film footage.
The selective use of various mediums of information, be it in written form, video, or a game, one can see heaven as hell and hell as heaven. Today, there is a decided imbalance never before seen that is offered in the portrayal of wars realities and its moonshine version that is used to sell its need to the public.
We no longer show military funerals on the tv for example. In our past, this served various reasonings as fundamental as the acknowledgment of one soldiers sacrifice and what it should mean to all of us. Omitting this often heartfelt and painful reminder, to me, diminishes the actual sacrifices these men and women made on behalf of their countries leaders, let alone the country itself.
There was a phrase used in the ancient world, and one that was recently offered in the movie 300 to those not familiar with such notables from history, "Come home with your shield or upon it". This stark reminder that a soldier not only faced death but also the death of his honor, as to return home with their shield would suggest they fled the battlefield. There is a level of intimacy with the dirty duty of war that has been lost by the above characterization of war as a game played by ladies in heels, and "noobs" with an rpg.
In our past, there was at least a greater recognition of wars consequences, and while we may have always sold war on its more glorious attributes, what made it so was that life was risked, not a high score.
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