I'm sorry, but I have to get this off my chest.
Please don't cancel me for this.
I am a 31-year-old millennial, and I like to think of myself as a progressively minded person. I’m up-to-date on the latest DE&I vocabulary. In my day job as a copywriter, I make sure to write phrases like “Black bodies” in my company’s marketing materials. I had #ACAB in my Instagram bio for a few months. I even shouted “All power to the people” that one time I attended a local DSA meeting.
Unfortunately, I was not always the hyper-woke and uber-PC liberal exemplar that I am today. I used to support the War in Iraq. I was 12 at the time and, to be fair, about 80% of America was for the war back then. It was 2003 and we all trusted the government. I couldn’t do my own research because the internet was just for Homestar Runner and Ebaumsworld. While I was too young to analyze the nuances of foreign policy and realpolitik, I was very passionate about getting rid of Saddam and those WMDs.
Now, before you judge me, I would like the record to stand that I have grown a lot as a person since then. When I realized that the New York Times was full of warmongering corporate shills, I canceled my subscription, and only returned when they purchased Wordle (I was also paywalled from NYT Cooking and was desperate to get their chocolate chip recipe). I have read several books by Chris Hedges and Cornel West and Norman Finklestein. I don’t even like war anymore—and please don’t spam my comments about the Ukraine flag plastered on the rear bumper of my Subaru.
Blind patriotism feels great, but I should’ve been more critical of the Bush administration. The fact that Dubya couldn’t spell or read should have been the tip-off that maybe he wasn’t the best man for the job.
The First Gulf War had better trading cards, anyway. I remember my parents buying me packs of Desert Storm and Desert Shield at the gas station when I was young, and I still have a Saddam Hussein rookie card and one from Colin Powell’s MVP season.
Regardless, these aren’t good excuses, but I hope my cherished readers and subscribers can find it in your hearts to forgive me.
These days, I get chills whenever I hear someone say the word “Nuclear.” I know Donald Trump made headlines when he said “Nuclear” is the new N-Word, but I think Joe Biden can give us a pass if we say it without the Hard-R: “Nuclea.”
Now that we have moved past this, I’m happy young people today are much more well-informed.
You were a child back then, as was I. The tragedy was used as a sling to catapult us overseas. Any dissent was not tolerated among politicians. You HAD to agree. It was difficult to see through in the beginning but any last semblances of naiveté were wiped clean in the years after the Bush presidency when we learned much more than we wanted to.
We have learned much more about what nationalism and patriotism really means. It is not blind faith and selective hearing, its critique and course correction. To love America is to continue shaping it and sometimes demolishing the parts that no longer serve the public.
I was about 15 living in rural NZ and wrote on my school book OPERATION DESERT STROM WE OWN THE NIGHT, WITH a pic of a stealth bommer and merica flag drawn in pen.
The propaganda machine and programming of the general Americans was massive, but they did not have access to many other ideas like now.
We had three channels and it was non stop on the news. Man loves exciting things , wars are bad but to humans it beats boredom as long as it's over there.
I was totally brainwashed.
Starwipe to 2007 and I'm working in a New York treatment center handling the toxic build up of depleted unranium dust and oil in veterans who were in there 20s back when I was 15 thinking that killing evil iraqis was good...
Sadzz