Baseball and War, All-American Pastimes

[alarimer]

This is just the type of emotionally manipulative military propaganda that I hate. It is disgusting, just bread and circuses. I have always hated any kind of rah-rah flag-waving nonsense but this just takes the cake. And incidentally, how much taxpayer money was spent on this little production? In an era when we are all supposed to "sacrifice" (but of course only the poor and middle-class end up doing the sacrificing, in the military or at home), why is the Pentagon still allowed to put on these spectacles?

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/baseball-war-american-pastime-red-sox

On this warm summer day, the Red Sox will play the Toronto Blue Jays. First come pregame festivities, especially tailored for the occasion. The ensuing spectacle—a carefully scripted encounter between the armed forces and society—expresses the distilled essence of present-day American patriotism. A masterpiece of contrived spontaneity, the event leaves spectators feeling good about their baseball team, about their military, and not least of all about themselves—precisely as it was meant to do

There is more. And he is also about American's aversion to shared sacrifice. People will wave the flag and applaud the troops but most will not even consider going there in their place. Of course "support the troops" is a hollow phrase. No one can even define what it means, so most people think it means applauding during these propagandistic set pieces because who wants to be seen not applauding? My definition of "support the troops" is bring them home yesterday. And end all these bullshit wars of foreign occupation. Let's face it though, most people join the military because they have nothing better to do. Most of them are poor. There are no jobs for people without college degrees (and very few for people with college degrees) so on some level it makes sense to do that. Learn some marketable skill and hopefully not die in the process. And they can do this because our military is a bloated giant machine that is many, many times bigger than the next 10 nations combined. I shudder to think what our society would be like without the outlet of military service for young people. Hundreds of thousands more unemployed people I suppose.

So my one quibble with the article is the idea that most people are not sacrificing. They are, just not in the way Bacevich means. Sure, most people do not serve in the military. But we have all (well not the rich) have had to pay for the military. That bloated budget means that seniors get their SS checks cut or delayed and we can't have a single-payer health care system. Imagine what we could do if we were not spending all that money on bullshit wars?