Ladies and gentlemen, if you ever really had any doubts about the growth of fanatacism in the US military, wonder no longer. Just pop over and check out Jeff Sharlet’s latest piece on the Revealer, where he revisits the article he did on the “infamous Christian Embassy video“–basically, a video that shows a bunch of Pentagon types, in uniform, enthusing about proselytizing at work.
Yes, at work. In the Pentagon. Spreading their particular brand of evangelical hellfire. As if the separation of church and state was just a convenient fict–oh, wait.
Growing up as an Air Force brat, Yours Truly witnessed firsthand the hand-holding between the military and evangelical Christianity. The psychological mechanism seems the same in both camps–willful denial of reality and unbending hatred of any dissenting viewpoint. It’s hard to be trained to slaughter in the name of God or Country unless one can believe in a Higher Cause, a Just Reason to bomb the shite out of someone else. The Christian Embassy might be another “invisible” infiltration of the armed forces, but that doesn’t mean its particular brand of zealotry isn’t falling into richly-prepared and congenial soil. And the iron fist of control necessary for military discipline lends itself to unthinking fanaticism very easily, does it not? It’s only following orders, after all.
Yeah. How many times have we heard that one?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying every man or woman in uniform is an unthinking neocon fundie. I’m just saying that the atmosphere of the armed forces lends itself very, very easily to such black-and-white, Good-vs.-Evil, with-us-or-against-us fascism. No wonder recruitment is falling off (despite Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.) I mean, only an idiot would want to get brainwashed and sent over to a death-trap without even any proper armor or a Commander in Chief with a hold on reality.
Right?
Right?
January 30th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Right.
When I was in the Army (mid-eighties) I was assigned to an infantry unit in Germany gaurding intermediate range nucleur missles.
We rotated groups out to the missle site for what we termed “tower duty” because our job was to man the towers at the edge of the sites security perimeter.
One of the squad leaders in my platoon was a particularly religious man, and would often hold prayer service at the site. One night before going out on the perimeter he asked my team to bow our heads and pray with him. Most of the guys did, but my room mate (a self-proclaimed Buddhist), and I did not. We, coincidentaly(?), ended up with “extra duties” for the next three days.
I complained to my platoon leader about the actions of the staff seargent, and the duties went away, but not because of the prayer issue. The reason my platoon leader put an end to it was because, “these men are already under enough stress, and it’s not a good idea to stress out men who are armed.”
The military structure being what it is, a lot of confused hyped up kids are browbeaten to believe in patriotism above all else. Such blind faith in leaders, makes for fertile ground for slick talking individuals bent on persuading others to blindly follow their twisted ideas.
A very good example of fanatic patriotism and religion combined with military training is what happened in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in April 1995