I heard it just yesterday, and I kept my mouth shut as to avoid the scrutiny and pointing fingers. A coworker decided to leave his position to re-up a contract with the military, and it didn’t take long for a couple people to pipe up and say “Well I greatly admire what he’s doing; I support our troops.” I winced inside, and kept my mouth shut as to not expose myself as one of yet to be mentally compromised.
Imagery of the scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers came to mind, when Donald Sutherland points and shrieks at a caterwauling pitch to denote that this person isn’t one of the group. And if the metaphor wasn’t hammered home enough in the movie, the corresponding acronym for the film should say it all, it also stands for Invasion of the Bull Shitters.
What exactly do we support about our troops? The cause isn’t noble, we’re almost all in agreement on this, and the way we target young poor Americans with a violent streak to fight wars for the wealthy is equally deleterious to our country. So why would I support our citizens naively picking up weapons to kill strangers that don’t pose an imminent threat to us thousands of miles away?
We’re engaged in an interminable war with a nebulous enemy, a war that has children running for safety on sunny days because that’s when the drones drop their bombs, a war that royally fucks up the long term mental health of men and women that we’re supposedly “supporting” and see a lifetime’s amount of nightmare fuel in a couple years. Usually these are young men and women with most of their lives ahead of them that are being exploited by a government that’s less than honest about it’s reasons for being engaged in combat in the Middle East. Wars that so obviously create more of what we’re ostensibly trying to combat.
This is the shit you’re supporting America? And yes, I can hear the programmed rebuttal of the American left and right as they say, well it’s the troops we support, not the cause. And how does that work? That sounds like more bullshit. If you find yourself saying such things you’ve been compromised by bullshitters, likely in your sleep.
It’s bullshit we’ve been consuming for years on end while we all try really hard to believe that we’re not one of the stupid manipulated people, no, we’re smarter than that. However we all fall victim to lies that we want to believe. We want to believe that government fundamentally wouldn’t lie to us, that our lives have meaning in our place in time, and we’re supporting noble causes indirectly that benefit mankind.
Bullshit.
The level of bullshit we consume is such that we actually believe government cares for our well being. When in fact they care about our well being as far as monied interests need a cheap labor force and consumers to continue to support the wealthy. We’ve been unknowingly turned against each other as our conscious minds sleep because we have allowed the bullshit to seep in without ever questioning it.
Morality laws and being sold on the premise that government is doing us a favor by outlawing drugs that free minds, and lessen pain. Being sold on the idea that those that don’t want to work as hard and actually take vacations and work reasonable hours, are lazy and not just wanting to live a more balanced life. We’re being bullshitted into believing that voting matters and the people are still in control of our system.
Bullshit.
We’re being bullshitted that leading the world in incarceration rates is requisite to our safety.
Bullshit.
When we’re told that pure capitalism is the only way to conduct an economy and that any other option will lead straight to Hitler and Stalin-esque oppression.
Bullshit.
It’s layers and layers of bullshit perpetuated by a small cadre of people that are merely seeking the best way to glean the most money for themselves. They have become incredibly sophisticated at this, where once they simply outright enslaved and stole from a peasant class, now they’ve evolved to pacify a populace and have learned how to pit us against one another to maintain the status quo. They’ve even tapped into the conscious zeitgeist of those that distrust government and ironically these are the same jingoistic individuals flying American flags, and believe in organized religion, two elements that are most likely to sustain bullshit.
The only cure for bullshit is objective unimpeded reasoning that is pointed in a direction for allowing all people to pursue happiness, while maintaining a balance between equality and liberty of the individual, and only the individual, not corporations that are supposedly individuals too. Ridding ourselves of the plague of bullshit means letting go of established norms, and questioning why, while also demanding empirical proof that the reasoning for our beliefs is based on solid philosophical ground. Albeit, this is not an easy task for overworked and underpaid Americans just trying to get by, it’s easier to just fall into bullshit. This is intentional, all you have to do is sleep and let it happen, let the bullshit wash away your worries. Unfortunately once the bullshit has you, your humanity, your individualism, your liberty, your bank account, and your moral character have all been invaded by the bullshitters.
