by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
July 13, 2012
Image by World Can’t Wait via Flickr
This piece originally appeared in the Boston Review.
We condition the poor and the working class to go to war. We promise them honor, status, glory, and adventure. We promise boys they will become men. We hold these promises up against the dead-end jobs of small-town life, the financial dislocations, credit card debt, bad marriages, lack of health insurance, and dread of unemployment. The military is the call of the Sirens, the enticement that has for generations seduced young Americans working in fast food restaurants or behind the counters of Walmarts to fight and die for war profiteers and elites.
[…]
via Truthdig
Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig
see
Don’t Enlist, But Don’t Just Take My Word For It by Lo
Chris Hedges: Those who are most attracted to war are the most incapable of love
Chris Hedges and David Zucchino On War Reporting
Before You Enlist! (2006) (must-see)
Soldiers of Conscience: To kill or not to kill?
The Body Baggers of Iraq by Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (2004; must-see; transcript)]
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Chris,, war is not hell anymore,,, we now have Predators !!!!!! The natural continuation of the development of weaponry,, all the way from the big wooden club,, to the gun,, to the bomb,, and now to the drone ! And luckily, we have an entire generation of young kids already skilled at killing people with video game equipment ! ” and it’s one two three, what are we fighting’ for,, don’t ask me I don’t give a damn,, next stop is,,,,” and you know the rest.
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Another great article by Hedges.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.