The War Culture

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.

Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
-- Bill Britt, The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism.

"Every day is Memorial Day. Every day is Memorial Day."

I was in the supermarket, looking at the DVD cover for the "Green Lantern," movie, when it hit me. When the realisation that had been dancing around my intuition's peripheral vision for who knows how long, finally came into conscious awareness; although there had been hints before now, like the last time I watched Terminator: Salvation.

"In a universe as mysterious as it is vast," the synopsis of Green Lantern read, "an elite corps of protectors for peace and justice had existed for centuries."

I stopped reading there, because what I'd been aware of for who knows how long, suddenly snapped into stark reality, before me, even though I don't know how to completely verbalise it, even now; but here goes.

There is an inherent paradox, in fact any number of paradoxes and contradictions, in the phrase, "protectors for peace and justice." I think Krishnamurti was the first one I heard say, that talking about fighting for peace, is directly akin to saying that we must lie in filth for cleanliness. The thing I've realised is, that the only people who've come up with the entire concept of needing "protection," from anything at all, are the Service to Self psychopaths; and they are the ones keeping the whole sick game going.

I'm a civilian. I haven't been to war. Yet something that a number of video games has taught me, is that in real war, a particular parallel is developing. It's this scenario where there's always another Big Bad to fight, somewhere; another raid boss.

"Every day is Memorial Day. Every day is Memorial Day."

In terms of the last 140 odd years offline, first it was Keiser Wilhelm, then it was Adolf Hitler, then it was Joseph Stalin, then it was Fidel Castro, then it was Ho Chi Minh, then it was Sadaam Hussein, then it was Osama bin Laden, then it was Moamar Qaddafi, then it was Bashar al Assad. Tomorrow it will probably be Ahmedinejad, in Iran. There have been any number of other smaller leiutenants along the way.

In World of Warcraft, first it was Kel'Thuzzad, then it was Illidan Stormrage, then it was Arthas Menethil, then it was Deathwing. There were any number of other smaller leiutenants along the way.

You might be wondering what the point of my thinking is, here; where this is all going, and why you should care. On AboveTopSecret.com, I kept seeing American veterans over and over again insisting to the civilians, that during the GWOT, in Iraq and Afghanistan, they'd somehow been defending someone's freedom. What the thinking members of the forum audience could never figure out, however, was just who's freedom that was, exactly.

It wasn't the freedom of the people living in those countries, themselves; unless we want to talk about freedom from corporeal existence. It hasn't been the freedom of domestic American citizens, unless we're willing to entertain the idea that lethal domestic use of unmanned drones, or Obama getting together with his lesser caporegima to decide who will get whacked by remote this week, is what the Constitution's framers had in mind.

I've started to realise, that what the people running the show want, is a scenario where, in the end, the cause for which people are fighting, in and of itself, basically becomes immaterial. Oh, the cause will be there, however vague, or peripheral, or riddled with utterly implausible bullshit it might be, so that as a last resort, we can drag it out and point to it as justification, if we ever feel the need.

That's not going to be the real point, however. The real point, will simply be that we keep fighting, purely for its' own sake. War as culture. War as a way of life. War simply because, supposedly, that is what we do. I'll never forget seeing the prologue to the video game Gears of War 2, where it was implied that warfare is a supposedly inherent, instinctive element of human nature. That is exactly what the psychopaths want us to believe; because for them, but not for us, it's actually true.

I made a decision, after seeing that, that gaming had lost its' innocence for me, and that I wasn't going to play any new computer games, or at least not violent ones. Today, the only thing I do in video game terms, is vicarious engineering in Minecraft, and the difficulty setting is Peaceful. I use that game as a means of building the types of models that Jacques Fresco has for the past 60 years now.

Jacques and I have a lot in common. We both like to think of ourselves as engineers, even though most other people would disagree, (especially in my own case) and we both dream of a better future; a future which nobody else seems to want. He, Nikola Tesla, Hermes Trismegistus, and Bucky Fuller are my role models; not Patton, Mussolini, Hitler, or Duke Nukem.

I had the thought while watching Terminator Salvation, recently; while watching Christian Bale and a few other people walk point through some generic underground cavern, that what I was seeing on the screen, was what the psychopaths wanted for us. A fully automatic, frag grenade present, and Kali only knows what future. A scenario where a continuing, never ending stream of blood, and fecal matter, and smashed bodies, and shattered minds, all transmutes into the dollar bills which the ruling psychopaths use to light their cigars. An unspeakable perversion of Alchemy.

I remember being in the Hall of the Brave, in Orgrimmar, during my time playing World of Warcraft; and similar online lobbies for several other games. I remember the sense while playing the various games within the Quake series, that the battle was constant, endless, perpetual; that 24 hours a day, it went on. Over and over again. Longer than years, longer than decades, longer than centuries. Forever.

Qoy qeylls puqlod,
Qoy puqbe' pu'.
yoHbogh matlhbogh je suvwl'
say' moltchu' may' lw.
maSuv manong 'ej maHoHchu'.
nl' be' ylnmaj 'ach wovqu'.
batlh maheghbej 'ej yo'.
qljDaq vavpu' ma' Dlmuv.
pa' reH masuvta Hqu'.
mamevQo'. maSuvlaH. Ma'ov.

Hear! Sons of Kahless,
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean,
the warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill,
our lives burn short and bright,
then we die with honor and
join our fathers in the Black Fleet
where we battle forever,
battling on through the Eternal fight.

The nature of it, has made me think, that maybe the Hindu concept is accurate. Maybe time in general is just one giant circle, and everything that has ever happened before, is either happening now, or is going to happen again in the future. Over the last few nights, I've been watching documentaries on the Pyramids in Egypt. A lot of people are starting to say that the Egyptians had to have technology that was better than what we've got right now, because we couldn't build the Pyramids ourselves with what we have.

"Every day is Memorial Day. Every day is Memorial Day."

That's what we're meant to think. I want to say here, once and for all, that Lest we forget is a lie. A cruel, sick, twisted lie; like most of the other lies the psychopaths use against us. The point of remembering war has never been to bring about the end of it, but exactly the opposite. By keeping war perpetually in our minds, the psychopaths hope to normalise war. They want to create a scenario where endless war is seen as a completely natural thing, for human beings. Beyond the usual grieving process that is healthy and normal in response to any of our loved ones who have died, the only thing honouring the fallen does, is ensure that there will be more of them.

The one thing I think the veterans love, more than anything else, is the distinction between themselves and civilians. To the American veterans on AboveTopSecret.com, I didn't know what I was talking about. I was just that infuriating boy from Australia. I think it was back when I was playing Doom 2 in the mid 1990s, however, that I started to realise that we were headed towards a society where, eventually, there'd be no such thing as a civilian. If you don't believe me, remember the Batman Massacre. Remember also, the imagery of Bane, and the way that character behaved, in The Dark Knight Rises; which like it or not, the Batman shooting was a reaction to, if only synchronistically.

I remember how ironic it was, when I read a citation from some UN documents, by Mike Adams, where the U.N. was talking about how it wanted to establish a global monopoly of violence. That's not what we're headed towards.

These games train everyone who plays them, at least conceptually, in infantry tactics.

Think about what that means, for a few moments. It means that if you are a parent, your child plays the Call of Duty series, he's going to learn what walking point means. He's going to potentially become extremely knowledgeable about modern warfare; the weaponry, the equipment, the jargon, you name it.

Your child, if he plays these games, will be taught that organised, systematic, collective murder, is the appropriate central focus of human existence.

Is this an education you want for your child? Is this an education that you want for yourself?

I've realised, ultimately, that I do not need to have experienced the real thing, to know that I do not want it.

Humanity is capable of better than this. We've come too far as a species, for our end to come as a result of this type of suicide. This has always been the main source of my frustration towards homo sapiens. Man is capable of a sufficiently greater degree of potential than what he currently exhibits, that I am incapable of more than barely comprehending it; and yet he insists on focusing on his own most base, negative, and bestial instincts, even to the point where extinction becomes a genuine possibility.

I'll let you in on another big secret, as well. My attitude here, is not coming from any professed enlightenment. I'm a long way from that. I've been permanently banned from four different Internet forums, including both versions of the World of Warcraft forums.

It simply comes from being tired of conflict, in whatever form. It doesn't need to be a scenario where I'm actually in direct risk of literally having my head blown off. Conflict between myself and the people I live with, or even the video game kind is enough.

I'm not one of their mercenaries, but I can still get rid of whatever degree of it exists within my own life. No more drama. No more even thinking about physical conflict of any kind. No more violent video games. I'm over it.

"Every day is Memorial Day. Every day is Memorial Day..."

Not any more it isn't. Not for me.