Nor do they want to know for real.
The deliberate ignor-ance of what it feels like to live within a war or a totalitarian society creates a false arrogance. As happens to those who live in the USA, Canada and northern Mexico in these last 150+ years .
The serious effects of war and the autocratic ruling of one’s homeland is not actually realized by these populations :
such as the traumatic dangers of physical maimings and real-life bullets,
the bloody painful rapes and tortures of civilians,
the enforced exiles and escapes,
the disappeared family members, the loss of family units, the loss of the men,
the deathly toll and total disruption of whatever assumptions there was of any normality in social life.
Life is not as watched on TV screens.
Most states & nations around the world have a deep knowledge of these war effects and yet it is not known if the leaders there take any greater care to avoid a repeat of these damaging effects. Central America has suffered thru many repressions, rebellions. dictators and ‘guerrilla’ wars. [ ‘guerilla’ definition= the diminutive of “guerra”= war ] The continents of Europe, Africa, Asia and what is euphemistically called “the middle east” from USA’s point of view have had many vicious turmoils. Whether within a stated country [read: country is that temporary government’s boundaries] or at their edges, war and ‘squirmishes’ result in the majority population living in fear.
Fear of the past conflicts resurging.
Fear of having to rigidly obey new rulers and their laws or be punished.
Fear of being suppressed and censored again.
Fear of never finding their dead relatives.
Fear of turning into a society with most of their men turned into the walking-damaged-dead. Fear of having few men to help families survive.
Fear of secret police and vicious surveillance.
Fear of everyone and anyone turning on the individual who wants to express some freedom, any ‘other’ thoughts, any alliances no allowed.
The younger generations of this fortunate and thus presumptive USA, called ‘generation X ‘, Y, Z and beyond, are sterilized in their emotions by the violence only watched on screens - that cause no pain or bleeding, no missing safety or security in their actual lives. The young are arrogant and take for granted that it will always be this way, in this ‘great land’ ....meaning the extensive large expanse of land mass that is labeled as one country.
So too in their northern country of Canada. So for a long while in the northern sections of Mexico, but not the lower regions of Chiapas and some segments where natives are denied their desire to not be ruled by the main governmental autocrats in what is called their “capital” for them. The sub-tribes, the regional races, the different groups with different languages and heritages are called “one country” because soldiers and wealth is accumulated into one main ‘political party’ [ which is not a party at all, but is one collected group keeping power and wealth in their closed fists. using weapons and laws to keep their ownership exclusive and away from any other groups under their temporary control] . No other version of ownership or rulership is ever allowed. Whether in Mexico, D.F. or Washington D.C., or Ottawa.
The USA youngsters like the killing they do, virtually on computer games, or engaged in fantasy movies /TV screens, and they revel in the illusion of being heroes and winners, while never ever being in actual physical danger or drafted into military killing and torturing machine groups. Living No War creates the false impression that ‘it can’t happen here, it can’t happen to us’..[.hopefully].
But many had parents or grandparents who did experience war traumas...in World War II in Europe, in Maoist times in China [almost a continent in size by itself, it is again not a single entity except by government decree and military enforcement, not by affinity groups, languages, cultures, or native races]. Military sent far from USA lands to do whatever service it was labeled in Korea, Vietnam, and a few other shorter battlegrounds.
Africa has been in turmoil continually and currently is most media visible as internal wars with cruelty, and extensive inhuman damage to almost all who live in the various ‘countries’, [countries are formed by government groups that encompass many tribes and religious enclaves - who want to claim full control over others, not just to convert but to control...wealth and power, of course].
The regions that were Yugoslavia once are still in dispute over who owns whom and which group is entitled to kill or rule over another one. Running over one’s prior borders is also continual and dangerous all around the northern African regions, as well as Israel, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, et al....all or most of these ‘countries’ are using violence and temporary allies to enforce their positions. Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, Srilanka and other South Asian ‘nations’ have constant rebellions of large ‘other’ internal groups trying to regrasp their ownership over the resources in their own areas.
International laws are conveniently made at points in history by nations that want to keep their borders intact - the same forever after - but only after taking over some other lands and peoples first. Then the laws are written to say “ do not take” and it is illegal to keep war-won adjacent lands. But that is after the boundaries are conveniently established by those rule-making bodies of governments, for any later wars and conquests. But not to question their own takings.
Look around, almost everywhere, but here and near here. And the DANGER is that the youth of “America”, meaning USAmerica and not all parts of this continent north or south, assume that war is just a GAME. To be played, to be watched, while being safe, to be waged without worry or pain or fear.
How can this spoiled youth of these latest generations that did ever not have food rationing, were not forced into military service and uniforms, and have been able to chose to disengage themselves from REALITY of the damages that bullying and killing causes - how can these young make ‘good choices’ politically ?
How can the young who all want to look tough and pretend they are strong and hope they can fight if need be, how can these kids chose a viable relevant president ? How can they know what they are doing when they vote ? If their parents have been ‘informed’ by television and movies that the children are the special prizes who get to disparage their elders and that the younger ones know ‘more’ & ‘better’ than their parents, and war-broken families ? We all may be in danger of this ignorance and deliberate pretense of ‘toughness’. The performance, the look of being well defended but not having been in a war zone.
The clothing fashion of wearing ‘sagging’ pants – copied from those who emerged from prison continued to wear - and thus the ‘toughness’ was displayed to insure that they would not be messed with, hopefully, is now worn so common by so many males that they appear to be prison-releases without the knowing of that violent lifestyle inside the walls. Or some are using their prison experiences to then excuse them from acting-out in violent reactions in defense and offense, but they also assume they ‘know’ about war itself. They don’t. The prisons in USA are not equivalent to those in more repressive countries where death and torture is much more common and never revealed.
The women also dress tough-like, to prove they are sexually desirable, and also tough ‘cookies’, sweet and yet available for sex to strong wealthy males. The similar intended effect is not just “I am capable of hurting anyone, so watch out !” but “come and try to use me, but pay up first” as prostitutes were advertising before the general youth population took over those displays of what body parts are available or for sale. No prudery or modesty is preferred, but blatant sexual advertising of the female body is displaying a street slut’s toughness too.
War forces mostly men to become killers, to lose their humanity by hurting and hating and losing all sense of their essential human ‘goodness’. War forces women into deep sadness, subservience, in service to the men who want sex with their violence to assuage their shock and guilt and emotional pains. Women are often reduced to becoming the workhorses for the war, so men can fight and hurt and kill and conquer more. Not like the Hollywood movies or Bollywood or Latin American soap opera drama prettify. War is painful for most. In so many ways.
The danger of war is that it can arrive here, not by “terrorists”coming in, but by our own USAmerican young being too sold on their consumerist desires and consumer debts. The danger of violence, not just individually in the poorer neighborhoods in crime and drug-induced intoxications, violence becomes falsely glorified, but never actually experienced in the mass destruction of wars that so many other people’s know.
The danger is that USA can allow itself, within all the different groups that exist within those federal governmental enforced boundaries, to be lured into making war the ‘taking’ of others in more distant lands , like Iraq has become, like Granada and Panama were, like parts of Vietnam and Korea became, like Japan and Germany were before, like the actual natives of these lands were also.
Taking as if what is the other’s is owed to us instead is a conquering war and the youth are advertised into believing that there is no cost or self-mutilation, so war is a good thing. Because they have never been in war. Because the young reject their parents and grandparents who actually experienced war and ruthless rulers. Because the young think falsely they are entitled to live in their virtual and fashionable fantasies and nothing bad could ever happen to them because they have been told erroneously that they are ‘special’.
War, death, damage, maiming, crippling, breaking of the human is real and has been waged and enforced for a very long time, in so many lands. To assume we in this USAmerica are safe on these shores, in this land, is not true. Not because someone ‘else’ wants to harm us. But because we have harmed them already and they want back what we have taken already, by military forces, by economic sleight of hand, by lies and movie images. We too need to know the reality of what war actually is and how hurtful it is to all who act it out and who are the civilian victims of the military, including the families of those who are soldiers of any kind.
The glamor of war needs to be punctured to picture it as the dangerous game that it really is played by owners of governmental leadership positions, regardless of what ‘party’ from which they superiorly claim to be. The young in these lands need to experience and acknowledge what their parents and elders have already learned and lost. To pretend that the USA IS SAFE and immune from the effects of wars elsewhere, [how far is “elsewhere” to be safe enough?] is to pretend we are not all living in this one world, called global, called one.
Even those who now are in military uniforms in open war areas like Iraq and Afghanistan are closer to the actual damaging effects - but compared to most other soldiers they are better equipped, armored, protected, and given later benefits that are intended to reduce the war damage in exchange for monetary goods and cheaper loans for purchases at home.
They engage in war and physical body dangers, and a few even get killed, but USA causalities are few in comparison to those whom the “Americans” exterminate, especially the civilians in those regions that have not been easily counted, plus the exiled from the war zones, and the suffering of loss of homes and normal lives in areas the US administration has chosen to “democraticize” or rather “invade”.
The war the other nationals experience in their vulnerable lives is not the same war as of the entering USA military in the same spaces. War in their homes, in their cities, on their streets, in their daily lives. They know war. We here in USA know very little by comparison. That is a big danger. Our youth are putting the rest of us all in danger. Because most of them don’t want to know more than the games of war.
