War Disconnected
My good friend Vinny sent me a set of American war propaganda posters and they really got me thinking about how phenomenally disconnected our present society, and in particular, my generation has become in relationship to the wars we have fought. Unless you have a family member or friend serving active duty it can be commonplace to completely forget that we have been at war for almost a decade!
I want to be clear that I don’t presently and have never been in favor of the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. I believe they were both opportunistic attacks on sovereign, albeit completely fucked up nations perpetuating an entire union of nations to drop bombs and chase down the middle-eastern equivalent of the Bloods and Crips.
ANYWAYS…… that’s not what I’m getting at.
These propaganda posters illustrate a need for the people to get involved and intimately be aware of the cost of war. These emotional, social and financial expenditures were to be prevalent from deep inside your mind all the way to the dinner table. You were aware of the war when you went shopping, when you cooked dinner and even when you had simple conversations with loved ones. When America was at war, Americans knew about it and Americans owned it.
While these posters graphically illustrated images of American soldiers dying in the field of combat, our generation has been intentionally left in the dark. When WWII propaganda encouraged us to buy war bonds, our president told us to hug our kids, go shopping and ride Space Mountain.
Sure, these posters encouraged a population to blindly follow and were intended to squash any attempt at dissent but they put the ugliness of war on the table….. literally. And when there is something sitting on your table you are much more likely to pick it up, inspect it and ultimately own your reactions to it.
Or you could just act like it isn’t happening, sport some Mickey ears and Shop Till You Drop!
Let’s own patriotism.
I find it amazing that there was so much propaganda deterring people from talking conversationally about the war. With social networks dominating the way we communicate and American soldiers having access to Twitter and Facebook on the war-front it seems unimaginable that common conversation was such a threat during WWII.
It’s ironic how much propaganda was distributed to encourage living a greener, more conservation focused way of living to promote success during wartime…… and yet the opposite message has been promoted throughout my entire life.
Gotta love those tree-hugging, conservation-minded, 1940’s WWII era Liberals and their Godless war-promoting Leftist agenda.
Ever buy a War Bond? My Grandparents used to buy me savings bonds. I’m pretty sure the only Bonds I’ve bought were the kind that helped with some nasty chaffing.
Has the working class ever been so publicly promoted in our generation?
Go ahead please!…. Take the day off.
(Que Texaco logo)
