"Support Our Troops!"

Have you ever wondered why you will hear the same commercial over and over again on the radio, or on TV? Do they think you didn’t notice it the first time? Are they too lazy to make a different commercial for the same product? Are they trying to make you sick of hearing or seeing that stupid thing? Or is it something more insidious?

Advertisers understand that, to burrow through someone’s psyche to the point that they remember something, repetition is often the key. If, day in and day out, the radio is telling you why you really want “Product A,” after a while your brain is likely to subconsciously believe it. And in a lot of cases, it hardly matters if the commercial is informative at all, or tells you anything useful. As long as they bash people over the head with the name of the product, over and over again, it makes it more likely that people will buy it.

And so it is with the ongoing U.S. military propaganda campaign: if they keep bombarding people with nationalistic, war-worshiping propaganda, a lot of people will buy it. There is nothing spontaneous or genuine about the ubiquitous “Support our troops!” message plastered everywhere. It is a very deliberate ad campaign by the war-mongers, to make the masses think that “the troops” are something great, that we all really, really need.

In reality, they aren’t. And we don’t. “The troops” are immoral order-followers who violently inflict the arbitrary whims of crooks and tyrants upon the rest of the world. But the average American, having been exposed to the prolonged “ad campaign” for militarism will refuse to accept that, and will likely lash out at any who bad-mouth the “product” they were trained to love.

In a way, this is a good sign. It means that those in power know full well that without an ongoing propaganda campaign, people would not “support the troops,” and would stop cheering for every war that the politicians decided to create. In fact, even with the multi-billion-dollar ad campaign for “War, Inc.,” a lot of people are losing their taste for it anyway.

Then the question becomes, how many people will dare to come right out and say, “This product sucks!” when most of those around them are still “buying it,” so to speak? On this “Memorial Day”—which the-powers-that-be have designated as a day when we peasants should express an extra heavy dose of nationalistic blind loyalty to the ruling class, and should “honor” all those poor dupes who needlessly died in conflicts cooked up by politicians to enrich and empower themselves—how many people will dare to openly bash the “product” of war-mongering?

Well, I will.

This “product” sucks!

It is stupid, and evil, and horribly destructive.

(I’m sparing the reader by not posting images of mangled and shredded body parts, which would more clearly show how super-duper the “product” of war really is.)

I don’t “support the troops,” even if the radio, TV, and various other advertisements keep telling me to. My view of reality doesn’t come from how many times bullshit artists throw certain words and catch phrases at my eyes and ears. I know what freedom and justice are, and I know that “governments” and their militaries and troops have never, and will never, fight for either one. To expect otherwise is ridiculous. Why would anyone ever think that those who want to rule the world would use their hired thugs to actually make people free?

Sure, lots of people who are obliviously ingesting the sales pitch of the war machine might get mad at me when I insult their beloved “product.” I don’t really give a crap. No, I don’t just offend people for the fun of it, but when the choices are to either insult and offend the “consumers” of militarism, or to remain silent while the meat grinder of authoritarian violence continues to annihilate countless human lives, then I really don’t give a damn about people’s “feelz.”

Fuck the troops.