Militarism

Humans disagree. Conflict is inevitable. Violence, however, is a human choice in the twenty-first century. While violence works for the biggest and strongest at any given moment in human history, it does not work for the human species.

There is a new militarism in the US. It is becoming subtle, gentrified by corrupted politicians, who value re-election and financial gain over the welfare of their constituents. Militarism is no longer a Left-Right issue. Corporate corruption of our political system has seen to it that the media they own foster this new militarism with sentimentality and near-sightedness. Even 'public' broadcasting outlets, both radio and television, have fallen prey to this. It was probably inevitable when all media succumbed to the Bush-Cheney manipulation of embedding reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a child of post-WWII America, I have lived with the side effects of the militarism of that period. I was raised by a traumatized father, whose psyche was permanently twisted by his experiences in WWII. I watched as my own government tried to intimidate those of us who demonstrated peacefully against the Viet Nam War. I was a college student at the time of the Kent State Massacre. I watched Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in front of TV cameras to show the suffering of their people and the evil of war.

We are emerging from eight years of Right-Wing indoctrination and intimidation in the US. The military establishment was an active part of that process for eight years. Now, while portraying himself as a centrist, our President, who we elected as an agent of change, is engaging in the militarism of the culture by participating in sentimental patriotism, which sounds to me like old-fashioned nationalism, complete with 'God and country' speeches.

I mourn this Veterans Day for all those pacifists who have fallen, who have been victimized, who have been forced to leave their country to avoid persecution. I mourn all those civilians all over the planet who are killed and tortured by men and women, wearing uniforms and wielding guns or machetes.