- 21 Sep 2010 00:00
#13503552
When you tune in to the evening news (to use the accepted term, whether the news is really purely news is another question) and you view footage of US military personnel walking through a town in Iraq what do you see interpretatively speaking, what construction does your mind put on the visual data your eyes are taking in? Do you see innocent overgrown boy scouts with an overdeveloped sense of duty to flag and country defending your freedom? Do you see professionals simply trying to do a difficult job? Do you see men and women who should receive our moral support?
Or, do you have a more critical bent of mind that morphs video of coalition troops into classic movie images of Imperial Roman soldiers with their crested helmets and their shields on one arm and short swords in the other hand marching through a city in Egypt or some village in the north of Europe, maintaining the Empire’s control over dwindling resources and riches?
This last way of viewing the soldiers, sailors, marines, and flyboys currently “serving” overseas is arguably more accurate, astute, and incisive. But it’s also a skeptical verging on subversive take on the First World’s self-serving use of its massive military might. And we’ve all been socio-culturally conditioned from infancy to shy away from such subversive perspectives, to think that our nation’s conduct is always guided by decent ideals and life-affirming values. That our leaders may be fallible and corrupt but that they’re never downright evil men. That when they take us into war it’s not just to line the pockets of private military contractors and large corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, that safeguarding our liberty and way of life really is somewhere in the mix of their motives.
Expressing such patriotic naiveté is rewarded and reinforced with social approval, the critical thinking that discerns the genuine, materialistic, mercenary motivations of the business and political establishment that runs the world system is often reacted to negatively. When one questions whether “our boys” are really in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve & protect their country or perhaps more specifically the special interests of the economic elite the response might be anything from a dirty look to verbal hostility and a threat of physical violence. Joe Sixpack likes to engage in cynical grousing about the government and poking holes in the hypocrisy of politicians, but the honor of the young men and women in the armed forces who function as the enforcers of the government remains a sacred cow that he won’t brook any disparagement of.
Yes indeedy, we’ve been very effectively programmed to divorce in our minds the rank and file troops on the ground who are carrying out the agenda of the corporate-political complex and its imperialistic occupation of a sovereign country from the sell-out politicians and kingpins of corporate greed whom they’re working for, from the dishonorable reality that they’re operating as the gunslingers of a government that fronts for big business, from the immorality of dominating a people with military force to profit economically.
Overcompensating for the way veterans of Vietnam were once vilified, these days we’re definitely inclined to keep our national tribe’s warriors up on a lofty pedestal above any ethical criticism for their participation in unjust actions. At the very least we’re willing to hand them the ole Nuremburg defense and portray them as the innocent victims of the higher-ups who’ve ordered them to be complicit in crimes against humanity. Apparently this is a flimsy defense only when it’s used by our enemies. And never mind that the US military today is an all-volunteer outfit, that no one was forced to join up, and that many have done so during the war, let’s stick to the pitying if inaccurate view of them as well-intentioned victims and helpless cannon fodder.
The danger of this magnanimous and supportive mind-set about our men and women at arms is that it’s easily manipulated into support for the wars and occupations they partake in. Well duh, that’s why it’s been instilled into the public of course. A people who’ve been conditioned to be pro-military, to “support the troops” right or wrong, are inoculated against any rabid form of anti-war protest. And their support of the troops is predisposed to translate into at least a mild support for what the troops are doing, for the war they’re fighting or their domination of innocent human beings in a far-off land.
Well, at any rate, when our minds are taken up with thinking sympathetic and grateful thoughts about our brave champions in uniform we’re not really paying as much critical attention as we should to such things as the phoniness of the pretext upon which they’ve been sent to fight, kill, and die, or the ethics of a superpower occupying a Third World country flush with a resource its economy needs to keep chugging along. In other words, the whole “Support the troops” mantra that’s been drilled into our heads is a good way of getting us to look the other way when the fat cats at the top of the economic-political food chain decide to shed some blood for their own gain.
And unless you somehow still believe that weapons of mass destruction or evidence of Iraq’s involvement in 9/11 exist behind some cloak of invisibility in Bagdad or Fallujah, you have to admit that the war and occupation are a manifestation of the unenlightened self-interest of the corporatocracy that runs the show behind the façade of our democratic system. Of course if you acknowledge this but try to remain a staunch booster of the GIs and jarheads fighting this bad fight it can cause some cognitive dissonance. That is, reconciling your admiration and support for the “service” of your troops with the incompatible fact they’re really only serving the favored few who sit pretty atop society’s power structure can be mentally conflictive and stressful. To avoid this mental stress people are likely to gloss over the criminality of what the US and its allies are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. This is why it’s so important that people find the intellectual honesty and moral courage to rethink their pro-military stance.
And no, this is not psychobabble, it’s a psychological fact that the human mind just finds it way too straining and draining to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in our consciousness at the same time, one or the other will get bumped out of our conscious thoughts or rationalized, and if you’re committed to being a stalwart backslapper of the veterans of America’s latest unjust wars, an apologist for a military that once again is allowing itself to be used as the ruling class’ strong-arm men, then you’re going to downplay or excuse the moral rottenness of using armed force to stake our claim to a source of a fuel soon to be in short supply.
If you’re someone who does have the integrity to reexamine his/her viewpoint on the current imperialistic (to bring back a word not heard so much anymore) wars/occupations being waged nominally in your behalf, I hope I haven’t put you off too much by not giving the military a free pass. Of course although the military deserves its share of moral scrutiny and criticism, the primary, principal, and most perfidious “evildoers” in the history of warfare are the plutocrats and politicos who periodically resort to utilizing military violence to achieve their selfish purposes...
To explore this and related topics please visit my new website, The Total Revolution Project.com Just click on or copy & paste the address below. Thanks.
http://www.thetotalrevolutionproject.com
When you tune in to the evening news (to use the accepted term, whether the news is really purely news is another question) and you view footage of US military personnel walking through a town in Iraq what do you see interpretatively speaking, what construction does your mind put on the visual data your eyes are taking in? Do you see innocent overgrown boy scouts with an overdeveloped sense of duty to flag and country defending your freedom? Do you see professionals simply trying to do a difficult job? Do you see men and women who should receive our moral support?Or, do you have a more critical bent of mind that morphs video of coalition troops into classic movie images of Imperial Roman soldiers with their crested helmets and their shields on one arm and short swords in the other hand marching through a city in Egypt or some village in the north of Europe, maintaining the Empire’s control over dwindling resources and riches?
This last way of viewing the soldiers, sailors, marines, and flyboys currently “serving” overseas is arguably more accurate, astute, and incisive. But it’s also a skeptical verging on subversive take on the First World’s self-serving use of its massive military might. And we’ve all been socio-culturally conditioned from infancy to shy away from such subversive perspectives, to think that our nation’s conduct is always guided by decent ideals and life-affirming values. That our leaders may be fallible and corrupt but that they’re never downright evil men. That when they take us into war it’s not just to line the pockets of private military contractors and large corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, that safeguarding our liberty and way of life really is somewhere in the mix of their motives.
Expressing such patriotic naiveté is rewarded and reinforced with social approval, the critical thinking that discerns the genuine, materialistic, mercenary motivations of the business and political establishment that runs the world system is often reacted to negatively. When one questions whether “our boys” are really in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve & protect their country or perhaps more specifically the special interests of the economic elite the response might be anything from a dirty look to verbal hostility and a threat of physical violence. Joe Sixpack likes to engage in cynical grousing about the government and poking holes in the hypocrisy of politicians, but the honor of the young men and women in the armed forces who function as the enforcers of the government remains a sacred cow that he won’t brook any disparagement of.
Yes indeedy, we’ve been very effectively programmed to divorce in our minds the rank and file troops on the ground who are carrying out the agenda of the corporate-political complex and its imperialistic occupation of a sovereign country from the sell-out politicians and kingpins of corporate greed whom they’re working for, from the dishonorable reality that they’re operating as the gunslingers of a government that fronts for big business, from the immorality of dominating a people with military force to profit economically.
Overcompensating for the way veterans of Vietnam were once vilified, these days we’re definitely inclined to keep our national tribe’s warriors up on a lofty pedestal above any ethical criticism for their participation in unjust actions. At the very least we’re willing to hand them the ole Nuremburg defense and portray them as the innocent victims of the higher-ups who’ve ordered them to be complicit in crimes against humanity. Apparently this is a flimsy defense only when it’s used by our enemies. And never mind that the US military today is an all-volunteer outfit, that no one was forced to join up, and that many have done so during the war, let’s stick to the pitying if inaccurate view of them as well-intentioned victims and helpless cannon fodder.
The danger of this magnanimous and supportive mind-set about our men and women at arms is that it’s easily manipulated into support for the wars and occupations they partake in. Well duh, that’s why it’s been instilled into the public of course. A people who’ve been conditioned to be pro-military, to “support the troops” right or wrong, are inoculated against any rabid form of anti-war protest. And their support of the troops is predisposed to translate into at least a mild support for what the troops are doing, for the war they’re fighting or their domination of innocent human beings in a far-off land.
Well, at any rate, when our minds are taken up with thinking sympathetic and grateful thoughts about our brave champions in uniform we’re not really paying as much critical attention as we should to such things as the phoniness of the pretext upon which they’ve been sent to fight, kill, and die, or the ethics of a superpower occupying a Third World country flush with a resource its economy needs to keep chugging along. In other words, the whole “Support the troops” mantra that’s been drilled into our heads is a good way of getting us to look the other way when the fat cats at the top of the economic-political food chain decide to shed some blood for their own gain.
And unless you somehow still believe that weapons of mass destruction or evidence of Iraq’s involvement in 9/11 exist behind some cloak of invisibility in Bagdad or Fallujah, you have to admit that the war and occupation are a manifestation of the unenlightened self-interest of the corporatocracy that runs the show behind the façade of our democratic system. Of course if you acknowledge this but try to remain a staunch booster of the GIs and jarheads fighting this bad fight it can cause some cognitive dissonance. That is, reconciling your admiration and support for the “service” of your troops with the incompatible fact they’re really only serving the favored few who sit pretty atop society’s power structure can be mentally conflictive and stressful. To avoid this mental stress people are likely to gloss over the criminality of what the US and its allies are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. This is why it’s so important that people find the intellectual honesty and moral courage to rethink their pro-military stance.
And no, this is not psychobabble, it’s a psychological fact that the human mind just finds it way too straining and draining to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in our consciousness at the same time, one or the other will get bumped out of our conscious thoughts or rationalized, and if you’re committed to being a stalwart backslapper of the veterans of America’s latest unjust wars, an apologist for a military that once again is allowing itself to be used as the ruling class’ strong-arm men, then you’re going to downplay or excuse the moral rottenness of using armed force to stake our claim to a source of a fuel soon to be in short supply.
If you’re someone who does have the integrity to reexamine his/her viewpoint on the current imperialistic (to bring back a word not heard so much anymore) wars/occupations being waged nominally in your behalf, I hope I haven’t put you off too much by not giving the military a free pass. Of course although the military deserves its share of moral scrutiny and criticism, the primary, principal, and most perfidious “evildoers” in the history of warfare are the plutocrats and politicos who periodically resort to utilizing military violence to achieve their selfish purposes...
To explore this and related topics please visit my new website, The Total Revolution Project.com Just click on or copy & paste the address below. Thanks.
http://www.thetotalrevolutionproject.com
- By ingliz
- By Potemkin
- By Puffer Fish