Why We Surrender

We just fucking give up because we've heard all this before (See also: "Hanging Chads" The Election of 2000 & Resulting Changes in the American Electoral System, unpublished.) over & over & over & over yet nothing ever changes. Now The New York Times offers another rehashing, in its O.G.L. Eisenhower-quoting tones of restraint & moderation. Who'll even notice? (Noticed at War in Context.)

Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war. Almost all think it ordinary to hear of drone strikes in Yemen or Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The recent revelation of counterterrorism bases in Africa elicits no surprise in them, nor do the military ceremonies that are now regular features at sporting events. That which is left unexamined eventually becomes invisible, and as a result, few Americans today are giving sufficient consideration to the full range of violent activities the government undertakes in their names

Were Eisenhower alive, he’d be aghast at our debt, deficits and still expanding military-industrial complex. And he would certainly be critical of the “insidious penetration of our minds” by video game companies and television networks, the news media and the partisan pundits. With so little knowledge of what Eisenhower called the “lingering sadness of war” and the “certain agony of the battlefield,” they have done as much as anyone to turn the hard work of national security into the crass business of politics and entertainment.

No wonder. Typed by a college professor. Does anyone doubt that the taxes of decent & real Americans are redistributed to this Marxist loser (A lifetime gov't. employee, it appears.) so he can teach his students to hate America?

Aaron B. O’Connell, an assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine reserve officer, is the author of “Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps.”