One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. (George Orwell)
You know what I really hate? Those horrible, insidious commercials for the National Guard that come on before the movie previews. So now in addition to the indignity of having to sit through commercials at the movies, we have to watch this abject propaganda over and over? (As my mortified kids will attest, I have an involuntary tendency to swear loudly at the screen whenever this stuff comes on).
The Kid Rock/NASCAR version (above) is especially horrid. “And if you ain’t gonna fight, get out of the way…” Boy, you don’t know the meaning of insult until you’re repeatedly subjected to foreign policy according to Kid Rock…
In the unlikely event that some theater owners are reading this, here’s my vote for a more appropriate rock and roll tutorial about our country’s foreign military adventures: That Man I Shot by the Drive-By Truckers. (Click below for the lyrics):
That man I shot, he was trying to kill me
He was trying to kill me he was trying to kill me
That man I shot I didn’t know him
I was just doing my job, maybe so was he
That man I shot, I was in his homeland
I was there to help him but he didn’t want me there
I did not hate him, I still don’t hate him
He was trying to kill me and I had to take him down
That man I shot, I still can see him
When I should be sleeping, tossing and turning
He’s looking at me, eyes looking through me
Break out in cold sweats when I see him standing there
That man I shot, shot not in anger
There’s no denying it was in self-defense
But when I close my eyes, I still can see him
I feel his last breath in the calm dead of night
That man I shot, he was trying to kill me
He was trying to kill me, he was trying to kill me
Sometimes I wonder if I should be there?
I hold my little ones until he disappears
I hold my little ones until he disappears
I hold my little ones until we disappear
And I’m not crazy or at least I never was
But there’s this big thing that can’t get rid of
That man I shot did he have little ones
That he was so proud of that he won’t see grow up?
Was walking down his street, maybe I was in his yard
Was trying to do good I just don’t understand
Shalom Rav 
When I was 18 and a freshman in college, in a class about important eras in western history, we studied the rise of Nazism. We watched a screening of Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph des Willens” (Triumph of the Will). A stirring propaganda film for the Nazi agenda. As I watched it, I noticed how I was affected–even though I abhorred all that Nazism stood for, the film was getting to me, it was visceral. So she was a talented filmmaker in the 1930’s, but now we have much much more potent technology (not to mention modern marketing techniques) to influence the minds and emotions of prospective warriors, who are 17-20+. Their brains are still knitting together.