As a child, in elementary school, we practiced drills in which we would scramble under our desks and cover our heads with our arms, as if assuming that position would somehow protect us from being instantly rendered to ash or save us from the walls around us being ripped from their foundations and hurled through the air as if small stones in a tornado.
The majority of my childhood and teen years were spent believing that nuclear war wasn’t a probability, but an eventuality. Most children in North America were educated in such a way that embedded in them a highly warped perspective of the Soviet Union, one that instilled fear and contempt without proper basis. The study of their contribution during the Second World War, for example, primarily focused on what took place after the defeat of the Germans, not necessarily the fact that between 1941 and 1945 the Soviets lost tens of millions in the global effort to defeat them - more than all of the allied nations combined.
Now, there is no questioning the fact that Stalin was a tyrant, just as there is no questioning the fact that most in the Soviet Union lived for decades trapped within the confines of a highly corrupted ideology that, after Lenin’s death, was bastardized, though the seemingly limitless propaganda provided by the romanticism of the revolution remained useful for decades afterwards. But to the average 11th grader in the 1980’s there was no differentiation between Marxism and what the West traditionally termed Communism because the average 11th grader was taught that they were synonymous with the massively obscured and highly repressive regime that came to power after Lenin’s death, a historical fabrication that tainted generations of young minds in the West.
In truth, Marx’s theory of history states that Communism is what is referred to as the fifth stage, one in which productive forces are democratically governed as a means to ultimately abolish the exploitation of others for private gain (it’s a little more complex than that, in truth, but good enough for purposes here). That said, Lenin expounded on Marx’s theory of the fifth state, suggesting that first a Socialist state was required to dilute the exploitative practices within society before Communism itself could be attained. Obviously, given his short lived and extremely problematic, and often violently tainted, governance of the country during its early stages, his vision would never be realized as it ultimately created a power vacuum that was too easily exploited by those that lacked his compliance to that vision after his death. And thus, Stalin came to power and, long story short, what could have been something truly revolutionary turned into a nightmare.
That nightmare became a global representation of Communism itself, and after the Second World War one that would lead to witch hunts, massive paranoia, and provide justifications aplenty for both overt and covert military actions around the world.
The Soviet Union, the world’s foremost ‘Communist’ power, a dictatorship squatting on the quashed ideology of a broken revolution, was the impetus for one of history’s most successful corruptions - it ensured that the plutocratic state, through the defense establishment’s overwhelming and sudden rise in influence, would mean the inevitable death of true democracy and render many Western governments little more than bodies beholden to independent corporate interests, interests that would, over time, become evermore entwined with domestic and foreign policy.
Free Publics And Authoritative Institutions
“Democratic Freedom is not sincere freedom in our social conditioning, but rather a synonym for security, safety, and law with order.” – Dale Mugford
Within any democracy there is no greater authority than the people. It is they that elect their representatives to government, and it is they that ultimately control the fate of government. That said, with regards to authoritarian structures within a democracy, it is important to remember that none of them possess greater power than the people themselves.
While law enforcement, for example, is employed by the public to ensure their safety, they are not beyond public scrutiny, nor does law enforcement possess rights that supersede those of the public unless a crime has been committed that is in direct contravention of the law itself. Thus, it is not within law enforcement’s power to detain you without just cause, question you without just cause, search your person without first charging you with a clearly defined crime, or otherwise impede your rights.
Interestingly, though we live in a society in which not only are our rights protected under the law, and one in which law enforcement agencies are subsidized by taxes, most commonly view law enforcement as possessing powers that far exceed their mandate. This, in no small way, has transformed public perception in that many view the powers of law enforcement as being greater than the rights of the ordinary citizen.
This is, of course, a fallacy. In truth, while law enforcement does possess the ability to act in accordance with their mandate as public servants sworn to uphold the law and protect the rights of citizens, they do not possess extraordinary powers that allow them to infringe upon the rights of the citizenry unless extraordinary circumstances arise, those being breaches of the law or situations in which the public is at risk. At no time may a law enforcement officer detain a citizen without charging them with a crime that is in clear contravention of the criminal code, nor have they the right to question a citizen without the presence of representation or having laid charges that warrant questioning – unless, of course, the individual in question is willfully aiding law enforcement in their attempts to solve a crime or catch a criminal that has broken the law.
So why is it that when ordinary citizens see law enforcement offers their first reaction is one of caution and trepidation, be it on the road while driving a car or walking down a street?
Such instilled fear is a very real part of our conditioning, and one that, with regards to the military establishment, is massively amplified.
The glorification of war in our society is nothing new. As a child I spent time in the woods near my house pretending to be a soldier, pretending to fight a merciless enemy, one bent on world domination and global destruction. Such actions were based largely on two things:
1) The glorification of conflict primarily because of our role in the Second World War.
2) The fear instilled in me by forces ranging from the media to school curriculum to my parents from an early age.
War, through the eyes of a child playing at it, was not something in which people actually died or suffered. It was not something in which one regarded the humanity of those fought against, or the lives lost in the crossfire. It was perceived as a purely noble and selfless act that was undertaken to safeguard freedom, despite the fact that people have rarely, if ever, had any control over the use of federally controlled militaries.
This vital schism, given the atmosphere that we now find ourselves in, is more dangerous than it has ever been. Because this is not something that will effect the psyche of our youth to reenact A Bridge Too Far in the woods behind their houses, gripped by a steadfast belief that they are embroiled in an imaginary and wholly glorified struggle. This is not a time in which the remembrances of our past glories can be leaned upon to justify our behaviour and our absolute unwillingness to question the motives of government and the use of our military abroad in a highly complex and ambiguous effort. If ever there was a time for young people to be instilled with the knowledge of the realities of conflict, of what it truly produces, it is now. This is not a time for air shows at which military aircraft are lauded over or fantasized about by children. This is not a time for tax dollars to be spent on the promotion of the military, nor is it one in which our policy objectives should be painted as anything but what they are – suspect. This is a time to step out of the woods behind the house, drop the plastic M16’s and remove the camouflage face paint, and look to the embracing of what it means to be an active participant in how the future of this country is shaped. It is with our youth that it must begin, and, ultimately, it is them that will be responsible for fighting the battle that we must, in all haste, begin. Not one that employs arms, but one that seeks to regain the people’s control over their own institutions. In short, it is time for our children to be instilled with the belief that theirs is a world in which destruction is not an inevitability, but one that can be mended by our responsibility to instill in them that theirs is a world in which fear and anxiety must not rob them of the ability to act or demand compassionate reasonability from their representatives.
From General Rick Hillier down to the newest recruit in our military, let in never be overlooked that the military in this country exists solely at the behest of the people. That were the people of this country, en mass, to demand its limitation or complete removal, that the government would have no choice but to adhere to that demand. Because that is how a democracy functions, and if there are those that disagree with that base principle then they are not advocates of our system of government, one that we must now sadly struggle to regain. National security aside, the people hold in their hands the power to evoke change, and if that change were to include an overhaul of the mandate of this nation’s military, then it would either have to be adhered to or present an awful reality to all Canadians – that we are not in control of this nation’s future or the use of its military apparatuses.
It is time for our children to come out of the woods behind their houses and into the streets. It is time for their voices to be encouraged, for the truth to be given them no matter how uncomfortable, no matter how contradictory to our own past perceptions. Because the reality is that hate is something that dwells in the heart and can only be dispelled by the belief that compassion and the voiding of intolerance is the only real revolution left us.
What is at stake is our humanity, and the abandonment of it in the pursuit of those that might so easily abandon theirs is not a solution, but a prison cell with the door left invitingingly open.
Militaries within the context of democracy do not supersede the people’s resolution. In truth, the overwhelming power that they now possess presents just as real a threat to our safety as those that we have been told want to see our way of life supposedly exterminated.
When the requirements of the military establishment in any nation supersede those of domestic welfare, then it is a state that is governed by the requirements of the military establishment. Such posturing has largely been passed off as defensive in the past, even prior to the commencement of The War On Terror. But in truth, it has little to do with defense and more to do with the ability to project power and, as has been demonstrated over the last five years, be it unilaterally, or covertly through funding proxies, the willingness to use it.
Crouching under my desk as a child I could not imagine the world in which we now live. Even at the age of 8, I would have never imagined grown men and women being so easily propagandized, so easily swayed to abandon their rights without asking serious questions as to why. My Grandfather, who fought in the Second World War, and who would never talk about it, always told me to never forget that the reason men like him, from small towns in the Prairies and elsewhere, traveled half way around the world was to ensure that people would see that ignorance is the best hope for the flowering of tyranny.
He was right, of course. And he fought in a war that was supposedly noble, even though he would have never dared classify it as such during his lifetime. To him it was simply five years that the world held its breath hoping that when it got the opportunity to exhale that it would not forget that the point of breathing is not merely an action that sustains us, but one that emboldens us with the right to be heard.
That truth, when looking at the decades of overt militarism that gripped the world in the post war era, is that the sentiments of men like my Grandfather were overshadowed by something that many of them fought to never again see become a reality. Instead, when I was a kid, I was crouching under a desk with my hands over my head wondering if, after school, we’d be in the woods behind the house playing at being heroes that were only categorized as such because they fought for my right to play baseball instead.
Now, as a man of 35, I watch television commercials promoting the armed forces as if it were little more than volunteering for positions at Adventure Land at Disney World. Billions of dollars are spent on such adverts in North America, just as billions are spent on education that continues to feed young minds a warped perspective of history, one that continues to dilute objectivity and seriously address the realities of our own misgivings and actions.
Like our struggle in the War On Terror, we remain in the right. But not because our principles or system of government is any better than anyone else’s, but because we have, like many others, perfected the art of lying to ourselves to spare us the indignity of having to face the truth.
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