Bullseye!
And when a private company “sponsors” an event that turns an otherwise innocuous item they sell into something you must buy to show your love for your country do so! The Corporatocracy demands it!
“You know we’re pointing out that a violent ground acquisition game such as football is, in fact, a crypto fascist metaphor for nuclear war…”
- Derek Lutz (Robert Downey Jr), Back to School
Thank god I’m not the only one who feels like this. Unless you were drafted into WWII, Korea or Vietnam, you haven’t “served” your country - you “served” our corporate masters.
I have to contain my eye roll every time I hear the “Thank you for your service” spiel. Everyone in uniform today volunteered for their jobs. I don’t see camouflage ribbons being put up for any other Joe Sixpacks humping at their jobs - why should I feel some special patriotic pride for somebody getting paid to do theirs?
My uncle signed up for the Army because he was tired of holding a plow and looking at a mule’s butt, and being a poor southerner in 1950 he didn’t have a lot of options for self-improvement that didn’t involve shooting at people. (He gained weight in boot camp, because it was so much less work and more food than he was used to).
My dad signed up for Korea because he’d got a college deferment from the draft, and he felt that obligated him to enlist once he’d graduated.
For a lot of people, especially poor southerners and inner city dwellers, service in the armed forces is the only legal way of gaining economic and educational opportunities they would otherwise be denied.
Once you’re in the uniform, you’ll be taught to have pride in it. Or at least, you hope so, since the alternative is worse.
Because they’re fightin for your FREEDOMS!!
Fermented hops? Not only does he not understand football, he doesn’t even understand beer. My opinion of Bolling was so high a few minutes ago.
Well, “you” also might learn NOT to have pride in it, considering that you’ve signed on to help carry out the vast project of corporate-driven, profit-seeking imperialism. Seems to me that’s a better alternative, not a worse one.
I would rather soldiers believed that dishonorable action would be an insult to the uniform they wear.
It seems to me that soldiers who believe their job is to do evil are going to be more of a problem than those who believe they are supposed to do good, regardless of how wrong either belief might be.
But, hey, admittedly that’s just my opinion… it’s yet another experiment I am unwilling to perform, so I’m going with my gut here.
Just like GWB.
I wish the military spent more time helping out at home and less time expanding “American interests” overseas. An empire doesn’t need “defense,” and they’re not defending MY interests. We should replace the Orwellian-named DOD with the Department of Peace. And then start acting accordingly.
It is the state religion, a religion based on human sacrifice.
Americans killing and dying in Afghanistan produces freedom and prosperity in America, not through any kind of empirical cause and effect we could argue about, but just through literal magic. It’s like “The Lottery.”
In America, corporate entities can now contribute to political campaigns. I’m not at all convinced that’s a good idea. But I’ve long assumed that real aliens, arriving here, would probably assume that multinationals are the most evolved living things on the planet, slime molds to our individual cells, and more sophisticated than nation states.
William Gibson
Given the recent trend towards overly hopped, super strong IPAs, perhaps this was another joke?
The Washington Fightin’ Ritualized-Tribal-Warfare-Surrogates has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Maybe we’ve finally found a name that Dan Snyder would agree to.
Oh, OK, I disagreed with you about the tactical wisdom of demonizing our armed forces so I am obviously just like George W. Bush.
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I enjoyed Mr. Bolling’s comic, as I often do.
When I found out that the Pentagon sponsors (pays for) a lot of those situations where a young son/daughter is being publicly surprised by her father-in-uniform at a major sporting event, my eyes were opened.
Because we’re being hit by this iconic “advertisement” over and over-- and now it’s clear just how exploitative a display it is.
Boom. I remember having similar thoughts as an undergrad when reading Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism. It’s a pretty gripping piece of archaeological anthropology. I read it right around 2002, and the parallels were undeniable between the ideas of riling up sacrifice-based religiosity in the drumbeat to the Iraq war. I keep meaning to revisit it…
On point yet again
