Article by Cal Nogov on Jan. 12, 2016
I know a man. I’ll call him Fred. He had a brother who I’ll call Tom.
Tom was conscripted by the U.S. government to go to Vietnam to kill or be killed. Tom did not die in Vietnam, but he returned home fucked up. Tom died recently.
Fred hates Vietnam and Vietnamese people. Fred loves the United States and is very “patriotic”.
This is the power of brainwashing and nationalism. The U.S. Government is the one who enslaved his brother and sent to him to fight or die overseas. The U.S. Government is the direct cause of Tom coming home damaged. Yet Fred hates the Vietnamese. Why does he hate the Vietnamese? He sees them as the ones who caused his brothers injuries.
Fred has anger and it needs to be unleashed, but he can’t bring his mind to direct his anger towards the real cause: The U.S. Government. The brainwashing is that powerful.
This came through my facebook feed the other day.
Here it is again. Same scenario. Different generation.
To the person who posted this:
Can you not see that those of us criticizing the government are not your enemy? Can you not see that those of us stomping on the flag are the ones trying to wake people up to the criminality of not just the U.S. Government, but all governments?
I know it’s painful to see your government as the abuser. You’ve been lied to your whole life by a government that pretended to care for you. You’ve been lied to your whole life by a government that acted like a father figure. The government is not a caring, benevolent father figure. It is a lying, manipulative user. It uses you to increase its wealth and power while you are disposable.
This is reality and it hurts. All anarchists have been through it. We are stronger for it. We are the strongest of the strong. We had the courage to face the pain. To seek the truth. To find the facts. To face reality. To admit to ourselves that we had been lied to.
The U.S. government killed your brother-in-arms by indoctrinating him into the cult of statism, recruiting him into the military, and sending him off to die overseas to increase wealthy and powerful men’s wealth and power. Your first reaction will be to lash out at me in anger and hatred for even suggesting such a thing. Do you have the courage to even think about that possibility, or are you just another tough talking coward?
