Too bad we can only look back fondly to a time when there was such a thing as an ‘anti-war’ protest movement. Those days are long gone, and may never return thanks to recent attempts by the GOP to pass laws effectively making protest illegal. These endless, genocidal wars we’re fighting today all over the world are at least as unjustified, immoral, and genocidal as the Viet Nam war was. But where are the daily protests condemning them? Where is the public outcry? The wars don’t’ even make the evening news anymore.

We are so removed from this global holocaust that hardly anyone here gives them a second thought.

The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 has become even bigger and more nefarious than he could have ever imagined. The Mainstream Media (MSM) helps create and perpetuate these wars. In addition to our imperialistic, unilateral foreign policy, we can never escape from the endless greed of the defense contractors and Intel companies which demand constant profits which the wars bring to their shareholders.

Under the current predatory capitalist system we now serve, there will never be another day of peace. There must always be a war being waged somewhere. But thanks to the virtual blackout of war coverage in general, there is hardly any need to even come up with excuses anymore for why we need to wage them

There were still a few elected officials who had a conscience back in the darkest days of Viet Nam (1968-74) and American journalism hadn’t been converted from a Public Service into today’s Government propaganda Profit Centers yet.

Too many of the populace have been brainwashed to believe that we must support our over-glorified military at all costs. Too many Americans would rather “thank a soldier for their service” than call them out for tacitly supporting the murderers of innocent people all over the world. Too many folks are so detached from all the violence and destruction perpetrated on their behalf they never think about it – because they aren’t allowed to see any of it. Most Americans are too busy Facebooking and tweeting and Insta-gramming and binge-watching NETFLIX to give a damn about much of anything.

The difference between then and now is: college professors and student activists were central in organizing the protests, many different groups would regularly protest. Eventually, even the MSM became critical of the war, but only because it was good for ratings when polls began to show a definitive change in the nation’s mood. And it was far too late by then.

Today, the professors and civil rights groups rarely organize protests. Student protests are given lip service by Regents and community leaders and are few and far between. And all the while the MSM helps sell support for the baby-killers.

Thanks to decades of forever wars in the name of rampant neoliberalism and a constant bombardment of propaganda, The Soldier is sanctified; the pinnacle of selfless patriotism. Any protest of war or even government action is declared an attack – not on the government or the military – but on The Soldier. And of course it is totally unfair to blame the poor souls who are forced to carry out the vile acts required by the MIC. They’re the ones who suffer severe PTSD and then are shamefully denied proper treatment by the corrupt Veterans Administration.

There is no leading political party or movement in the USA that is faithful to democracy and the common good. I do not expect that US voters will unseat our entrenched oligarchy before we enter total ecological, economic, and social collapse. I certainly hope not. But what is happening now in this country is a marker that American political life will never recover.

While I vote at every opportunity, I know that it’s a quaint ritual, because US culture reflexively turns to authoritarianism, militarism, and scapegoating in fearful times. Our culture deeply imprints programming of indifference and disconnection from reality and an obsession with the trivial and sensational. This is why in the fearful times certainly ahead, collective conditioning will most likely exhibit a subordinate fixation upon the dictates of the most self-serving among us.