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Not having fought in a war (yet?) I won't dare to speak about the core message here (it's well worth reading), but I sometimes wonder about dissemination of thi

Not having fought in a war (yet?) I won't dare to speak about the core message here (it's well worth reading), but I sometimes wonder about dissemination of this knowledge. The fragments about Hitler and Goebbels shielding themselves from gory reality on the ground are interesting in this context. This shows well how the leadership operates on the level of its own fantasies, and moves the "chess pieces" while clueless about what they're really doing. The current difficulty in Russia with actually mobilizing many parts of society gives one a glimmer of hope: they have a handle mainly on marginalized and poor village dwellers. Maybe the modern living standards and communications landscape does ultimately make people more resistant to being mobilized for dumb wars, even if for 100% selfish reasons and (sadly) without necessarily getting rid of imperialistic nationalism. This one of the crucial reasons defending untampered speech is important, and why communist China has the information policies it has. (To be sure, draft evasion was very much a widespread thing even in republican Rome.) I sometimes think that middle 20th century was such a horrible time in many respects (not to deny earlier and later brutality) because they did have many technological means of communication, coordination and mass broadcast already--but to the degree it was usable only by the central elite. Thus they could enforce social conformity and mass projects, often wars, with relatively little difficulty. Compare how war journalist work is described in the article.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> The current difficulty in Russia with actually mobilizing many parts of society gives one a glimmer of hope: they have a handle mainly on marginalized and poor village dwellers. Maybe the modern living standards and communications landscape does ultimately make people more resistant to being mobilized for dumb wars, even if for 100% selfish reasons and (sadly) without necessarily getting rid of imperialistic nationalism. This one of the crucial reasons defending untampered speech is important, and why communist China has the information policies it has. (To be sure, draft evasion was very much a widespread thing even in republican Rome.) Despite the wartime propaganda efforts, Fussell notes in this piece that one of the things King George VI may have been ignorant of was that all his jails and prison-camps were full to bursting with deserters and draft-dodgers, as D-Day approached.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Of the 4 U.S. Boomer presidents: Clinton used an educational deferment & Rhodes scholarship to dodge the draft, then enrolled in ROTC when the law was changed, then pulled out of ROTC once his draft number was high enough that he wouldn't be drafted anyway. Bush enlisted in the Air National Guard, which was never called up for Vietnam. Obama was a child. Trump had "bone spurs". There's a long, recent history of draft dodgers doing well in high places.
  - baybal2 4y ago
helloworld11 4y ago
>fragments about Hitler and Goebbels shielding themselves from gory reality on the ground are interesting in this context. This shows well how the leadership operates on the level of its own fantasies, and moves the "chess pieces" while clueless about what they're really doing. For Goebbels, as a cripple who never fought in any war, maybe so, but not for Hitler, at least as far as combat violence was concerned. The man was a repeatedly wounded veteran of the first world war who had served right in the worst of front line duty, and knew exactly how brutal the carnage could be for every one of the millions of soldiers he later ordered out to battle through his generals. Cluelessness might apply to his ordering of the holocaust, because a thing like that pretty much had no precedent in human history, but not quite so much for his war-making. Curiously, while, as far as anyone knows, Hitler himself never witnessed one of the mass killings his death camps were performing daily, Himmler did want to see what it was truly like, and nearly fainted at his first sight of all those regular people being gassed at once. Didn't stop him from continuing to approve the whole monstrous thing though...

yamtaddle 4y ago

> The current difficulty in Russia with actually mobilizing many parts of society gives one a glimmer of hope: they have a handle mainly on marginalized and poor village dwellers. Maybe the modern living standards and communications landscape does ultimately make people more resistant to being mobilized for dumb wars, even if for 100% selfish reasons and (sadly) without necessarily getting rid of imperialistic nationalism. This one of the crucial reasons defending untampered speech is important, and why communist China has the information policies it has. (To be sure, draft evasion was very much a widespread thing even in republican Rome.) Despite the wartime propaganda efforts, Fussell notes in this piece that one of the things King George VI may have been ignorant of was that all his jails and prison-camps were full to bursting with deserters and draft-dodgers, as D-Day approached.

nostrademons 4y ago
Of the 4 U.S. Boomer presidents: Clinton used an educational deferment & Rhodes scholarship to dodge the draft, then enrolled in ROTC when the law was changed, then pulled out of ROTC once his draft number was high enough that he wouldn't be drafted anyway. Bush enlisted in the Air National Guard, which was never called up for Vietnam. Obama was a child. Trump had "bone spurs". There's a long, recent history of draft dodgers doing well in high places.
- baybal2 4y ago

helloworld11 4y ago

>fragments about Hitler and Goebbels shielding themselves from gory reality on the ground are interesting in this context. This shows well how the leadership operates on the level of its own fantasies, and moves the "chess pieces" while clueless about what they're really doing. For Goebbels, as a cripple who never fought in any war, maybe so, but not for Hitler, at least as far as combat violence was concerned. The man was a repeatedly wounded veteran of the first world war who had served right in the worst of front line duty, and knew exactly how brutal the carnage could be for every one of the millions of soldiers he later ordered out to battle through his generals. Cluelessness might apply to his ordering of the holocaust, because a thing like that pretty much had no precedent in human history, but not quite so much for his war-making. Curiously, while, as far as anyone knows, Hitler himself never witnessed one of the mass killings his death camps were performing daily, Himmler did want to see what it was truly like, and nearly fainted at his first sight of all those regular people being gassed at once. Didn't stop him from continuing to approve the whole monstrous thing though...