Propaganda is easy to unpack once you get down a few basic rules.  One of them is this: “the louder the slogan, the bigger the lie“.

That is also the case with Veteran’s Day in which US Americans thank their veterans for their “service”.

Now even setting aside the true reasons why US Americans sign up, there is a much more important fact which the US propaganda machine is trying to whitewash: US “servicepersons” (yup, let’s keep up with the times!) ALWAYS fight in the other guy’s backyard.  Always.

So they have to somehow resolve this self-evident contradiction: I fight for the other guy, in his own backyard, by fighting against him.

In order to make that one stick or, at least, to damped the cognitive dissonance, you do two things: first, you demonize the other guy while, second, you claim to “serve” for high, lofty and utterly meaningless notions like “manifest destiny”, “democracy” or even, as I heard recently, to “save the Jews from the Nazi gas chambers”.

And it works.

The bigger the lie, the louder the slogans, the more energetic the flag-waving and the bigger the patriotic-hysteria around the “gratitude” towards those who are, undeniably, hired murders (even those who do not pull the trigger, but help others do so).

Of course, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics are needed to obfuscate the true nature of what the veterans really did (and still are doing), the truth seeps under this ideological concertina wire, especially when veterans blow their brains out, suffer from PTSD, drown in drugs and booze and end up homeless in immense numbers.

So Veteran’s Day is not about veterans at all, it is about self-absolution, about just for one day pretending to care about veterans and their “service”.  But crucially, this day of shame is about whitewashing murder.

Violence and lies are twin brothers always working hand in hand towards their common goal.

We can get a feeling for the magnitude of the violence perpetrated by the US servicepersons by observing the ideological intensity of the “protective shield” of lies which are needed to conceal its true nature of their actions.

I don’t know of Latin American drug cartels have a “Dia del Sicario” but if they don’t they should emulate the “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” and create one, celebrated with lots of flags and expressions of patriotic piety.

I personally will join those few souls who hope that the day will come when the US military will truly be what it has never been before: a force whose mission is to protect the people of the USA from foreign threats (not that I see from where this threat may come from).

Only then will the US sicarios become real soldiers.

Andrei

UPDATE: in one of the comments which the mods (rightly) sent to trash there was one question which I feel needs to be addressed: what about the Russians in Syria?  Ain’t that the same?

Nope, for the following reasons:

  • The Russians went to Syria not to start a war (the Empire did that), but to STOP one
  • The Russians did not commit mass atrocities in Syria
  • The Russians were directly threatened by “Axis of Kindness” operations in the Middle-East (what the CIA was doing in Afghanistan in the 70 it never stopped doing and was STILL at it in Syria)
  • Last, but not least, the Russians did not flee in disgrace from Syria (or Afghanistan, for that matter)

So no, it ain’t the same.