So our far off warriors, pilots and ship commanders, after battle slip back into their clean bunks, servile servants, sterile food and Playboy type recreations in an area safe from reprisal. In that cowardly way of careerist 'war' they help corporations control the labor of weak peoples, while elite managers conspire to rape world resources (as USMC General S.D. Butler so eloquently wrote and testified). Meanwhile their career tracks advance consistent with 'superior' technology and the avaricious economics of exploitation of all those weaker 'others'.
And for all that so-called heroism they get promotions and medals and pensions, finally tunneling into a turnstile job with the civilian-bribing side of the Mil/Indus/Intelligence Complex.
If they are captured bombing tens-of-thousands of civilians, most often, as in Vietnam, they claim common soldiers' food, grubby quarters, enforced solitude and harsh detention rules as having been torture. Then come home as if heroes, as if they were men who had fought to the death for some great democratic or Christian or humanist principle.
Yet that consumer fattened public on the outside of this corrupted system of economics, which we hypocritically call 'National Defense', is certainly not innocent. For they do not wish to be bothered with these truths, so not to be made uncomfortable with any reminders of aggression going any deeper than war bunting and Sousa marches bellowing sundry Memorial Days into nostalgic festivals of historic forgetfulness and have-a-good-day tinsel sleepiness.
Why? Because in their true heart of hearts there are good citizens who know that as supposed Christians, in a supposed democracy, they are as morally and ethically guilty as the aggressive perpetrators they allow to represent them. In that innate human heart there are Americans who understand that they, too, are being corrupted: by immediate satisfaction passing for real needs, by media hyperbole glossing education, by short-term memory replacing old truths, by selfish hopes replicating family security, by vicious competition replacing cooperation, by political hubris degrading democracy and a trite national superiority complex debasing brotherhood. A history of economic and ideological violence can be so placated
True modern 'warriors', such icons of service, right? Plus post-modern citizenship, our true electorate, right? The latter allow such false warriors to become our respected leaders, our supporting elders - allow them the righteousness upon which to advise their subordinates, neighbors, children and grandchildren on how to best 'get along' in society. Thusly becoming models for the personal success stories passed down to our youth.
As with all corrupted empires, some form of higher justice, higher than post-action melodramas written to shore-up heroic aggressions, will evolve to rise above all the lies supporting the dominating Paternalistic egos managing our institutions. To, hopefully, prevail towards an honest system of social justice, towards real equality and a community based upon ethics and humanistic values..., eventually.
But only so if the public can drop all those lies and fears they neurotically cling to, drop the paranoia biased myths and rituals so accurately described by Nietzsche. Yet possible only if they honestly, truly awake to the rot in the center of our economic and theological barrels.