18 & Life to Go

We're not supposed to connect what we're seeing today with the cult of fetishism Trump supporters display to Hitler's rise in the 1930s; of course any comparison is instantly deemed to be ridiculous. But the ancient axiom that old men send young men to die in their wars because young men are foolish enough to be convinced to fight for their cause is also very true. I'm 51 years old and there's no possible scenario in which anyone could convince me to suit up for some war out of patriotism or some other bullshit, for two reasons: since I'm 51 and not 18 I know that life is not cheap & disposable, or that there'll be some reward in the afterlife for "noble heroes" (paging Wilfred Owen, please) for me to revel in. But more importantly when you're 51 you've seen behind the curtain a little bit and you know the reasons for young men dying in these wars aren't always as pure as the history books like to tell. And to tie it back to Hitler, when we think of a young American boy dying in battle during WWII we think of his journey to that final bullet being one of duty-fueled nobility and genuine dreams about saving the world etc etc, when in reality the whole reason he was even there in the first place is because more than a decade earlier millions of people had gotten together and decided it was a perfectly fine and normal thing to do to elect Adolf Hitler into power. And of course we can assume that exactly 0 of these people had any idea of what would follow in the end, and we'd like to assume that about 99% of them would change that vote if they could go back in time. And so then the reason that maybe it's NOT such a "crazy!" thing to do to compare those people to Trump's people is that right now we have millions of people recklessly throwing their vote to someone in an almost cavalier manner, one part "it doesn't matter anyway they're all crooked" and another part "sticking it to the libs!", all while watching the results of their decision unfold in front of them as if they're only watching a movie and there's no real-world consequences. Then one day 10 years down the road some 18 year-old kid is getting his head sawed off his body in a desert halfway around the world and the reason he was even there in the first place with a uniform & a gun won't be because God is always on our side and there will be salvation in the end if we fight the good fight blah blah blah, it'll be because more than a decade earlier millions of people had gotten together and decided it was a perfectly fine and normal thing to do to elect Donald Trump into power.