If you are 18 years old and an antiwar protester, old militarists will say that you’re too young and naïve and ignorant to understand the complexities of foreign policy and should just shut up. But if you’re 18 years old, and you don’t know anything about anything, they are happy to send you to go kill people in those very same foreign conflicts you don’t know anything about.
Old Enough to Kill, Too Young to Protest
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
2 Comments. Leave new
As is said: “knowledge is power” and, thus, apparently, so is keeping people ignorant. Fortunately, “cultivating” ignorance can be accomplished simultaneously with destroying the teachers’ unions and “cancelling” university professors & administrators with politics to the left of Attilla the Hun, among myriad other techniques.
This “people are mushrooms, treat them accordingly” project seemingly works nicely, at least until it becomes unavoidably evident that it 1) turns the “can DO!” society into the “I don’t know & I don’t care” society and 2) alienates all the MANY countries the young, ignorant US killers have tormented since WWII to the point of combined, active rebellion.
From there, the heavily technology-dependent empire/economy soon collapses proving that the knowledge conveying true power is that of the mass of persons rather than that of the infinitely avaricious/pathological control-freak 0.001%.
Note: effectively, in “the West,” there is NO age at which one is able to protest without inviting physical or electronic harassment. At a recent group protest, 74year-old presidential candidate Jill Stein was slammed to the ground with a police bicycle, handcuffed and dragged off for booking on assault charges.
The two panels are not in discord. What the military needs is cheap, disposable warrior-labor. That is, kids who, mainly due to the “education” they’ve received, have no understanding of anything involving the military’s role as enforcer for global corporations and who have no other economic actions available to them (Walmart can hire only so many people). They genuinely believe the military is a force for good because they’ve seen “G.I. Joe” and similar pro-military fare.
To support that all-consuming need, the military-supporting side of the equation must minimize any contribution by young resisters. This, unfortunately, is quite easy to do because most young resisters contribute very little, other than ammunition for the pro-military side and mangled bodies and minds that can be trotted out as needed for fundraising purposes on late-night television. Part of this is due to the protesters being coddled and useless. Part of this is due to their simply not having had enough time in life (they’ve been adults for all of three years) to assimilate the necessary introductory texts and concepts, let alone digest them at an intellectual level.
So, yes, from the military perspective, young people make excellent cannon fodder, in no small part because they don’t have enough experience to challenge the narrative. “What do ‘the river’ and ‘the sea’ mean in the chant?” “Um, like, stuff? And junk? And things? Patriarchy is bad. I really care, though! Until the next shiny distraction comes along!” Christopher Hitchens could go up against Henry Kissinger, not Stardust Azure McTrustfund wearing the keffiyeh zir had express shipped via Amazon because it looked cool.
And off to moderation it went.