… if the scrofulous old men who cause wars and declare wars allowed the citizenry to fully comprehend what actually happens–psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually–to the legions of young men they send off to fight their unjust wars, there might be a true anti-war movement, based not on politics but on horror and revulsion against war.

Also from Tom’s interesting, eminently readable comment.    

What occurs to me is, this is exactly what television did for the Viet Nam War, brought it into our living rooms, and usually over dinner—the news was at 6:00, and there was not this over-saturation, this 24-7 dribble … or is it drivel …

And fuck if we weren’t out there marching. The only reason you are not … well the reasons are several-fold, all speak of a thoroughly deracinated, overworked and stupidly overly-busy population. Capitalism has made slaves of you. Of women, in general, having won so much of what we wanted, an important presence in the workplace—but the labor of purchasing that goes into this. The faux labor of shopping in general. This many-headed hydra of an economic system keeps your wants and expectations always one step ahead, dangling carrot-like.

And then there is the complete control of the media. Imagine! Scenes from war, as they happen, right in your house! Shootings! Death! This is not my cable TV!

We could also speak of the terrible split of a both soothed and busy population—has there ever been a country so benumbed whilst also at war? Of course, it isn’t a real war, less so than any we’ve ever gotten into. That is because it is the corporate brain-child of men with particularly not-normal brains, Bush and Cheney, not to mention the priceless “known unknowns” Rumsfeld. God damn, we’re gonna bring democracy to them Iraqis if we hafta kill every last one. Not that it was ever about democracy.

The Oil Wars, they’ll be called.

I get old, I wear my trousers rolled, and it seems I write more and more of the past. Only, I assure you, when its truth inserts itself, like a shaft of light, into the nonsense that is American political policy today.

Show decorated coffins, fine. How about a single encounter in Afghanistan. Footage from a roadside bomb in Iraq. Oh hell, cannon fodder is what the young are, cannon fodder is what they have always been.

Tags: capitalism, war

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