Weekend conversation #1: A naturalized American citizen talks about how a visit to Gaza made her hate Israelis for being responsible for the straitened circumstances of Palestinians and now she took every opportunity to criticize the Israeli government, which she saw as exceptionally evil. I pointed out that the U.S. government had been a lot harsher to anyone who had ever borne arms against it. There aren’t many in-person opportunities to feel sorry for those who have borne arms against the U.S. and are living in squalor because most of them are dead (or living in cages in Guantanamo).
Weekend conversation #2: A forty-something mother of three recounts her recent citizenship interview and ceremony. She is asked “Would you be willing to bear arms to defend the United States?” Her secret thoughts ran more to escape with her children rather than standing and fighting, but she tried to come up with a sufficiently belligerent response to satisfy the officials.
If we decry violence in our society, why do we insist on the willingness to carry out violence as a condition of citizenship for new Americans?
[Note: Personally I was a little offended that a new citizen wouldn’t be willing to shoulder any military burden if the barbarians were at the gate. I would go to war if asked, regardless of the futility of the war, because I don’t see my own skin as more worthy of preservation than my fellow Americans, I don’t think that someone else should go in my place, and I don’t have any power to stop our government from conducting the war.]
My uncle lay down on the tracks when they were moving munitions to nearby air bases to send them over to Vietnam. He was part of a larger movement and, especially in retrospect, it is clear that the protests at home were part of the decision to end the war in Vietnam.
So, you may not have *defnitive* and well-defined powers to change whether you country is at war, but there are things you can do.
I wouldn’t kill other people to “defend” my country unless they were invading. I do not believe that a single life ended in Iraq has increased the safety of the country. It seems more likely to have done the reverse, in fact.
I’m with Colin, more or less, on this matter.
The oath taken upon entering the US military enlisted ranks first promises that each will defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The Constitution – not the whims of corporations or MILINDSEC wolves. The third segment pertains to obeying orders from POTUS and superiors PROVIDED they are not contrary to UCMJ. And there’s the rub.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_enlistment
Defend the Constitution, not the soil, not the interests owning the soil, not your governor’s uncle’s brother’s sister’s virginity, but the Constitution. One should not – cannot, really – be compelled to fight for anything. In the case of the current SNAFU in the sandbox, I would have plopped down on my ass and told them to prep a court martial, because I’m pulling 6-to-forever in the brig before I take a shot at or for a cause I do not agree with.
I’ve long stated that I would fight and die, eagerly, to defend the nation from invasion, provided I can yet stand and bear arms. Doesn’t matter what nationality the invaders might be, nor that they be Communists or other Democratic-Republicans to be frank. I’ve no problem with Communists provided they are freely elected to office as they should be according to our system – just to help clear my fog, here. But let any make landfall with murder in his eye, and I promise you we would – millions – rise to resist.
But the odds of that happening, for the now, seem quite distant. What are more obvious are the domestic attacks being made on the very document our troops are sworn to defend. No silly, not the very paper itself, but the words and thoughts and way of life it represents. Convenient that we’ve pushed the bulk of our war machine to the Persian Gulf and buried it in the sand – none left to defend the Grand Ideas of our land and people. Curiouser still that we don’t understand why the Iraqis are resisting, while we would dare demand the same of our own.
More directly to your blogging: I would expect a mother to choose safety (defense) for her children before patria. She’d fight, too, but she’ll run to move those pups to a safer den before she’ll stand and fight. You’d have to corner her hard to get her to do otherwise. That’s fairly easy to understand. I would think.
C.
One of the largest misunderstandings of the issue of violence in our society is that the media is responsible.
One study from the University of Michigan tracked students fifteen years to show that watching violent TV caused violence in later life.
They failed to control for exposure from Subliminal Distraction.
Normal features of the physiology of sight caused mental breaks for office workers in the 1960’s. The cubicle was designed to solve that problem by 1968. The “special circumstances” of those early prototype workstations that caused the mental events are so simple they can be created anywhere.
If you have ever startled when someone stepped up beside you or reacted when you “caught something out of the corner of your eye,” that is the brain system that causes the problem.
You can learn to ignore the movement so the startle will stop but you can’t “stop seeing” any thing in your vision field. This system is such a primitive part of our physiology that you can’t turn it off. It will continue to subliminally detect movement and attempt the vision reflex. That action is a Subliminal Distraction.
Exposure will cause a sudden mental event that may include violence.
Too-close side-by-side seating in classrooms is the same design problem. The growth spurt of puberty makes larger bodies easier to detect if they move in peripheral vision.
The constant subliminal perception of threat-movement can be shown to cause fear, paranoia, and depression.
Violence happens around the world as Culture Bound Syndromes but no one is aware of the cause. There also, too-small single-room living arrangements called traditional ethnic housing allows the “special circumstances to be created.
These crowded living quarters are in our inner cities. That’s why mental illness is more common there. Violence is a small part of the effect of this phenomenon.
The features of physiology that allow exposure from Subliminal Distraction, subliminal sight and habituation in peripheral vision, can be observed by performing the psychology demonstration at VisionAndPsychosis.net.
The Virginia Tech shooter was described by roommates as having behaviors that would have caused exposure. He used a laptop in the common room with the other suite mates waling around him.
An AR-15 for every new American! They’re only $800 – less than a price of a mid-market laptop and with a far fewer obsolescence hassles.