School Daze

--Loitering at the Doors of Perception,
B. Kliban

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell
--Aldous Huxley

As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
--The Times They Are a Changin',
Bob Dylan

Is it that hard to make us look cool?
--Almost Famous (2000)

I'm just trying to be honest
about being a misanthrope
--Dazed and Confused (2003)
_____________________

Knocking around in the far recesses of Ranger's mind is the minor indignity suffered at his alma mater this summer.

While in Bowling Green, Ohio, we decided to contact the school paper just for grins, to volunteer for an interview as the RangerAgainstWar, a Distinguished Military Grad of the BGSU ROTC Program, award-winning Progressive blog writer extraordinaire. Well, the offer went over like a led zeppelin -- the editorial staff had no time for his anti-war stance. What a difference a day makes.

In 1968, the Bowling Green campus was a hotbed of anti-war sentiment, and the ROTC cadets were taunted as ROTZ Nazis. Ranger and his ROTC buddies tried never to wear uniforms to class as we were ridiculed by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) instructors. We would schedule our classes so as to allow an hour before ROTC classes to change into uniform. People would throw trash at us when we would hold our annual review.

Fast-forward to 2011, and the last commencement speaker was a Staff Sergeant E-6 Air Force Active Duty type. Back in June '68 when Ranger was commissioned, Medal of Honor recipient Lew Millet conducted the ceremony, and nobody besides us cadets were even aware of his presence on campus. Now the campus reveres an E-6 AF dude.

How did we get here from there? Why do we not object to our Phony Wars on Terror (PWOTs ©)? Why is a low-ranking enlisted man elevated to commencement speaker and an anti-war advocate ignored? It seems Ranger is out of time, out of place, a stranger in a strange land.

When a formerly liberal college is not even interested in "fair and balanced", we are traversing strange terrain.

In the Pocket

Pointless careerism? Putting on a man-tailored suit
with shoulder pads
and imitating all the worst behavior of men?
This is the noblest thing that women can think of?
--Feminism, George Carlin

"Listen son, you're wasting your time;
there's a future for you in the fire escape trade.
Come up to town!"
--I Know What I Like, Genesis

There's no time for trivialities
when you're forging you career
--Irina Builova
___________________

Ranger couldn't avoid overhearing two female ROTC cadets from the local university loudly discussing their careers recently. Careers -- and they are only cadets.

They have not done their first soldiering, and it is that which careers are built upon; careers are not items of issue for military cadets. But so sure are they of the military as a growth industry that they simply take for granted the fact that their next 20+ years are laid out for them. A job it is, like any other.

This observation sums up the problem with the new U.S. military: Careerism is more important than soldiering. It is obvious from this conversation that careerism is inculcated from day one.

Apparently they have forgotten that the "R" in ROTC stands for "Reserve". There was a time when ROTC was a balance to the regular Army Officers produced by the professional West Point Academy sphere of influence. However, recent developments have swept away this distinction, and now Reserve Officers are every bit as inured as the Academy grads to lock-step career-mindedness.

Careerism alone has never won a war.

Radicalized

I'm not fighting
For justice
I am not fighting
For Freedom
I am fighting
For my life
--Day After Tomorrow, Tom Waits
___________

We at Ranger discuss the lack of war protest today at any meaningful or effective level.

We wonder WHY? Why is America lying back, accepting a devastating war destroying both our international standing and our dollar? We are heading the route of the Soviet Union. Our national coffers are as empty as our savings accounts (df.: a quaint notion to which every grade school student used to contribute, like a piggy-bank. A place to save money [if you had any.])

From 1964-68 Ranger was a "ROTC Nazi" Army cadet. The years '66-'68 saw "radical" war protests across the nation, many on college campuses. Our ROTC reviews were often on the receiving end of these well-organized political protests, scripted as good theatre, led by groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS.)

Ranger wore his uniform to class and represented the U.S. Army on campus, a happy little troop defending rural Ohio from godless Vietnamese Communist hordes. Ranger was not a radical.

How odd it is that those opposing violence and warfare are deemed radicals, while those supporting mindless militarism are patriots. Many an hour Ranger pondered this concept while huddled under a poncho hootch.

In the '60's the main way to stymie the protesters was via drug enforcement, as most of the SDS-types smoked marijuana and from all reports, inhaled. One such protester was given a 15-year sentence for possession, with the sentencing judge saying that he would not allow Bowling Green to become another Berkeley. (Not a chance, really, since the Wood County courthouse still featured a historical display of the town's last legal public hanging.)

The Nixon administration would later fine-tune its silencing of the the opposition to include IRS harassment.

Now in 2008 the U.S. finds itself in a "long war" that is accepted as business as usual on all levels of American society. Where is the outrage and public opposition? Some artists are writing protest songs, but they gain no airplay. Why the complacency?

The government has been stolen from the will of the people. And after all, it is professional soldiers fighting for the flag and motherhood. That is why they joined, so fuck 'em. The problem is, they represent the U.S. and our function is not to fight but rather, be a responsible member of the world community.

We are not citizens because our Army can bully-boy the Arab street corners of the world. Sounds like Ranger has become radicalized himself, if being radical means not supporting phony, preemptive, open-ended wars without any clear benefit to the U.S. I thought only people like Rush Limbaugh and "radical shiite cleric" Muktada al-Sadr were radicals.

It has been a long, strange road from the ROTC classroom in Ohio.

--Jim