How Misinformation is Born

The other night I'm sitting at Pop's Safari Room having a discussion with fellow libertarians regarding how the USA has become the self-appointed World Police, the insanity of the Iraq War, and how tax-payer dollars are being spent on propagandist recruitment advertising by the U.S. Military to sucker young men and women into joining these unneccesary, meddling conflicts around the globe. The main focus of our ire wasn't military recruitment or even military advertising, but specifically, propaganda-style recruitment a la those ridiculous Kid Rock "American Warrior" videos one gets bombarded with before every movie at the theater.

See, I have no problem with military recruitment or advertising for the sake of recruitment. We need to keep our military staffed, I get that. And there's nothing wrong with laying out the benefits derived from military service, i.e. learning a trade, college tutition, serving your country, etc.(all, let's not forget, at the expense of taxpayers)

But I have a problem with popular entertainers creating testosterone-driven, nationalist propaganda music videos to brainwash young minds into thinking it would be "cool" to join the National Guard because Kid Rock says it's bad ass!

That night, this led to a discussion of the Nazi propaganda films, Hitler youth, etc. and as luck would have it, there was a couple sitting near us who were not part of our group, and who apparently had not heard all of the lead-up to the Kid Rock/Nazi propaganda portion of the discussion. The gal portion of the couple spoke up first, asking us in a fairly disgusted tone, "So, you don't think the military should be able to recruit?", followed by the guy she was with pointing out that he was an 11 year veteran of the Air Force.

There was no mistaking the assumptions made by said couple: Libertarians are anti-armed forces. I tried frantically to explain what led up to the bashing of the Kid Rock video, and that libertarians are FAR from anti-military, but alas, I could tell the seeds of misinformation were sown. Plus, being the crappy "salesman" that I am, I failed to convince them of what a ludicrous piece of propaganda the Kid Rock video truly is.

We're all doomed.