Barstool Jockey

There are some things you can’t talk to people about unless they already have experienced something similar. Actually, there are a lot of these things, and generally all of the people who have gone through them agree on the salient points. Find a group of young mothers and ask them about the experience of childbirth. Meet a group of former alcoholics and listen to their tales of quitting. Talk with some paragliders, or some surfers, or some X sport enthusiasts, and marvel at how much they all seem to agree on things related to that activity. Repeat ad nauseum.

Then there are travelers. They all have had wonderful experiences, incredible adventures, and shitlow days where nothing seemed worth a damn. Pretty much every one I’ve ever met has expressed their heartfelt desire to do as much traveling, wandering, exploring as they can in this life, and how they can’t wait for the next town/country/trip. None of them want to have a career, relationship, or situation that interferes with their wanderlust, at least “not yet.” Nothing is so important, so drawing, so engrossing as this crazy lifestyle they’re all stuck in, and it’s a secret that none of those poor working stiffs at home will ever understand because they just haven’t been here, haven’t felt this.

Then the travelers all go home, get steady jobs, fall in love, and get married. They pop out kids, take out a mortgage, buy a car, and they’re set in a completely different orbit. It’s like a rite of passage – go out there, see that there’s an alternative to the life you led, live it, love it, be changed forever, swear to never go back and get stuck, then go back and get stuck. Oh, and tell your stories – the ones that mean so much, the ones that shaped your entire life – to a bunch of people who will not get it, will never be quite able to understand what the fuck you’re talking about, nor why you keep telling the same tales over and over as the worry lines spread, as the drinks come one after another after another. Former travelers and bar stools seem well acquianted – like strippers and dollar bills, like rice and beans.

Not surprisingly I have no real desire, even at this late hour, to become another barstool jockey with that old fire dying. I’m sure I could settle down, get a respectable job, and start slowly dying – if I’m not careful, that’s less possible and more inevitable. It takes a lot of work to remain free and mobile. The thing is, there’s no profit in freedom, adventure, rabble-rousing, or doing anything that don’t sell other things. There’s a way for me to fund my travels, probably forever – travel writing, hawking bracelets or artwork or small gizmos to tourists – but I can’t be fucked with to do that, because to me those things are just a different level of the same soul-salesmanship that epitomizes modern existence.

How much is your life worth? That’s the real question being asked when you look for a job, and answered whenever you accept a paycheck or do anything for profit. How much am I willing to sell a chunk of my existence for? For most of us, that isn’t much. When I worked in Honduras, it was $5 a day, plus a bed in a concrete hovel and three squares. In Guatemala about $200 a month and all the leftovers and booze I could sneak. Was I happy with it? No, not really. Not when I thought about it. Thing is, I didn’t think about it much because the other rewards of my life – being in amazing cities, swimming in phosphorescent seas, watching volcanoes erupt from my rooftop and living in foreign lands surrounded by amazing strangers – all made up for the shit pay, and on top of that, life was cheap as dirt. The ability to leave town right now, no notice beyond “I quit”, no more time required than packing a backpack and walking to the bus terminal – none of those hurt either.

Now I’m back stateside and the question looms but the answer is going to be a little more problematic. The rub is that I’m losing every perk – the sense of adventure, the foreign travelers, the ability to tell my future boss to shove this job up his ass as I walk. I’m facing a looming mountain of credit card debt, an awful job market in a city I’ve never really enjoyed living in, and I’m going to lose my biggest advantage, which was being from a far-off land surrounded as all of the foreign travelers and locals that sustained me through the rough times. In Central America everything about me was as exotic, wild, and different as I wanted it to be. My flight and inability to stay put were seen as assets – my refusal to put up with bullshit jobs, my dirty clothes and scruffy look were all admirable to those around me. I was desired, looked up to, praised for my lifestyle. Once I get home I’m nothing – just another post-college bum, broke and hungry, with an awful resume and a useless college degree. Stories and adventures aren’t looked too highly upon here. To say I’m not looking forward to it would be like saying cattle going into the meat factory weren’t much looking forward to the future either.

That’s why I’m think about that former traveler, lined, resigned, fire dead inside, sitting quietly on his barstool. In the near future I’ll be him, unless I’m careful. It shouldn’t be so god damned difficult to live without selling yourself, without giving up your values, hopes, and dreams for a dollar. Especially when that dollar is just going toward the things you need to live.

Who really profits, when it comes down to it? Those business executives, the ones everyone hates for their massive salaries and crazy bonuses are working 100 hours a week straight from school to heart attack, going through their divorces, never seeing their children until they plop over spent and dead. They’re not winning. The burger cooks and maids and strawberry pickers get the shit hours, the family problems, the health destroyed, and don’t even have the pay to show for it – they’re definitely not coming out on top. What about the guy in the middle? He’s working all day, gets his two weeks off, might even be able to skip out of town to go skiing once in a while. Still, he’s underwater on his mortgage, going further in to pay for little Jimmie or Juanita’s college in a couple years, doesn’t get to see the piano recital or the ballgame, and is one paycheck or a broken muffler from falling into poverty. I don’t see him coming out on top either.

Perhaps the guy doing best is the one sitting on a street corner in ragged clothes, singing to himself as he watches everyone rush off to their deaths. He might be the only one who sees the joke. I mean, people are GIVING him free money sometimes, pitying glances, and he’s the only one free to do as he pleases – it would make Kafka smile. Sure, he’s never going to have the nice vacation home, he’ll never get to visit the fancy restaurants, and he certainly won’t make the “25 most influential people of 2010” but have you seen how much Barack Obama has died in a year? The man has aged a decade and a half since he began running for the office! Every action has a price, every movement, everything we do – I’m halfway, barely joking about the bums profiting most from society being as it is. What use is there in having so much, so many nice things, if you spend all of the best parts of your life striving for more, for better, so that you can spend the dimming years in relative, threadbare comfort?

Why not just live yourself ragged, die a few decades earlier, and have something beautiful to show for it? A successful shoe company? A lifetime sales award? Employee of the month? A BMW and a stamp collection? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! What use is any of that, what value can it possibly bring you? A poem written on a torn-off piece of a cardboard box has more value in it than any of those things. A kiss at sunrise on a rooftop – priceless. The look a girl gives you as you help her pick up the spilled items from her purse is worth more than any CEO’s pay can buy. There is nothing good, nothing valuable, nothing helpful that comes from the work 99.9% of us do, and yet we all carry on, all push ahead, so that we keep consuming, multiplying, dividing.

Isn’t that what a cancer does? Pushes on ahead, grows, spreads, regardless of the health of the organism or of the system? Perhaps human society has gone cancerous. Perhaps we’re not good any more, have become the very root of the problem. Granted, we need to survive, but does DSL cable, fast food hamburgers, or suburban sprawl really even out against the destruction necessary for any of it? You can’t have modern America if you don’t have modern Haiti – the two must coexist or neither can. Sub-Saharan Africa, for all her woes, is the Siamese twin of Los Angeles, Beijing, and Rio. Those of us on the upper end don’t see it much, but every excess, every luxury we have comes from somewhere else – somewhere there are children starving so that kids in America can eat greasy french fries. This is a zero-sum game, just like selling your time for money, but at much larger scale.

There is X amount of Oil, Y amount of water, Z amount of arable farmland. Every resource has a true value balanced against a limited quantity, and that reality of limits must factor into any discussion of worth. If we factored in the true cost of burning one gallon of the only fossil fuels we have, fossil fuels that cannot be replaced, do you think it would really cost $3.50 a gallon? $10 a gallon? Give me a break – how much do you think the last gallon of oil will sell for? The same can be said of clean water, just look at the water wars that Bolivians were going through a couple years back! Likewise for everything on the planet – at a certain level there is a finite quantity of everything we depend on, because we only have this planet as yet – until we start mining the universe for raw materials, that is a fact.

If we were smart we’d start thinking about what we really need to survive – not video games, not new clothes, not the latest iFuckstick – food, water, shelter, power, medicines, community. Those are things we really, truly need, and so of course those are the things that have such ridiculously suppresed values. Growing food isn’t glamorous, doesn’t pay well, and so nobody even knows where their dinner comes from. It’s cheaper to import it – labor from Central America, off-season foods from the Southern Hemisphere. The true cost of growing a tomato in Chile, packing it in a box, shipping it to the US, and then selling it to me in the middle of NYC should include the environmental impact of every step, just like the true price of one hour working in that dead-end sales job ought include the one hour less you have alive. Why doesn’t it?

For starters, such a revaluation would blow the shit out of everyone’s investments – what sane person would buy a house in the suburbs if gas sold for its real value? Who would ever work at or support one of those big-box superstores? Nobody. The US economy would collapse as the service sector was seen as the useless circlejerk that it is, and the world economy would follow. There wouldn’t be a market for luxury goods if we were serious about saving resources. There would be no fall fashion, no seasonal sales to pump up the numbers. There would rations – life would become a whole lot poorer, dirtier, labor-intensive. The US would have to stop consuming 25% of what the world consumes in a year. Things would be a whole lot less routine, and we’d have to start living as if our actions actually meant a damn thing. A lot could change, and to say it would unpredictable is an understatement at the very least.

That would be uncomfortable. That would be scary. Thus, everyone with a vested interest in the current order of things – be that a house, a fat 401k, or just a truck and an apartment in the city – has a stake in things staying as they are now. Or at least, that’s how it appears on the surface. The guys in the nice seats in front class, with beverage service and the hot air stewardesses have every reason in maintaining the current system right up until the airplane nosedives into the ground. Almost everyone in the US fits that metaphor – we’ll be doing great right up until our brains go through the ass of the guy in front of us. If we were smart, if we were looking ahead, if we thought about what we were really doing, we’d probably all sell our cars and plant a garden, or move off to a place less utterly dependant on scarce resources and imports. I’m not holding my breath…

The wizened old traveler slumps forward on his stool, the glass nearly empty in front of him. The barkeep, a fresh looking kid from another country, stands polishing a glass in front of him. “Another mack?” A shake of his head nearly sends the sodden chap onto the floor. “No thanks – I’ve had too many. We’ve all had one too many.” The bar is nearly empty now, the few remaining patrons all in shit shape and on their way out.

“Say man, whatever happened that stopped you from doing all that crazy traveling you talk about? It seems like you really loved what you were doing, and if you’re still talking about it now, you must regret giving it up.”

“I didn’t give it up – it ended because it had to. There’s not really any way to sustain that sort of life unless you’re born rich or get lucky and inherit some dough. That’s part of the tragedy of it all – you find this life, so beautiful, so rich, so utterly fulfilling and free, and then you have to go back to another one that you don’t agree with, that you hate even. You swear you’re only going to work until you can get out, until you can save up a bit and blow this joint, that you’ll never give in, that you’ll never sell out like all the other suckers.” A tilt of the glass, and it’s empty now.

“So what happened?”

“Same thing that happens to everyone. I fell in love, got stuck in the job. Once I had a kid I wasn’t going anywhere soon, and then the years just fly by with the drink. Now – shit. I don’t think I’d even know how to travel like I used to. You won’t find me wearing a backpack and hitchhiking, that’s for sure.”

“Pretty tragic.”

“You can say that again.”

“Pretty tragic.”

“Hah, fuck off! I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Take care of yourself out there.”

The old man staggers out, pauses with a hand on the doorframe and slowly turns back over his shoulder. “You think you’re different, that you’re young, and you’re smart, and you won’t fall into the same traps I did. You might be right, but if you’re going to succeed you need to be relentless – to follow what you want even when it doesn’t make any sense, even when it goes against everything your friends and family say, even when it nearly kills you. Eventually, it will kill you – doesn’t matter what it is, it will eventually knock you down and you won’t get up that time. Just make sure that whatever kills you is worthwhile. That’s the only way you won’t waste your life.”

And with that he’s gone, out the door into the misty night. The young bartender shakes his head, wipes another glass, and smiles to himself. Life goes on, and there’s work he needs to do. Why worry about the ramblings of washed-up old men?

Raul

His name was Raul, and he was once an illegal immigrant to the United States.  He came into California, worked picking crops, taught himself English.  He fell in love, married, had 2 daughters.  He moved from picking crops to chasing traffic accidents and recommending ambulance-chaser attorneys to the victims – an extra-legal profession, to borrow Joe Klein’s Orwellian Newspeak.  Eventually Raul got on the wrong side of a cop, and was deported.  His wife and daughters remain to this day in the US, and Raul has not seen them since he left.  He rebuilt his life, began to work at a textile factory in Honduras, but that shut down when the owners decided it was easier to move operations abroad then to pay their workers $240/month.  He’s been unable to find work since, unsurprising in a country that suffers 30% unemployment and whose economy is driven primarily by remittances from the 1,000,000 Hondurans living in the US, and after that by textile manufacturing, banana, and coffee production.  An export economy to the West suffers deeply when the US and Europe aren’t buying, and to complicate matters, ever since the military-led Coup this summer, tourism has been flat-on-its-face dead, leaving this writer to conclude that 2009 will go down as the year Honduras got brutally beaten, shaken down, and left for the vultures on the side of the road, a not-occasional-enough event in this part of the world.

Really – when there’s no money, no work, your children are starving, and there are a very small group of incredibly rich owners in your midst, what would you do?  If you answered “turn to crime” then you’re spot on – the poor in Honduras have been driven inch by agonizing inch into the sort of activities that would get one labeled a terrorist and possibly French back in the US of A.  Everything from massive surges in gang and drug-related violence, kidnapping, smuggling, roadblocks, hijacking, bus and taxi robbery, pickpocketing, underage prostitution, child and female slavery, damn near everything you’d want to limit if your goal was societal stability is rising, and rapidly too.  Not only in Honduras, mind you – every place in Central America is seeing the same problems, the same trends, as the global economy sags like a 70-something social butterfly who fell behind on her Botox shots.  As the bigshots protect their own asses and their friends’ Wall Street investment firms, the people further down the line take the hit all the harder, and this part of the world is pretty near the bottom of the totem pole.  No one has credit, liquidity, savings to fall back on – most don’t have an extra tortilla or cup of coffee to spare, let alone money.

The rich will survive this – even if they have to sell the extra Mercedes and the lake house, they will make it through, keep sending their kids to the right schools, showing up at the right events.  The middle class (in the US sense) will live as well, though not without having to cut out the Starbucks a few times a week, perhaps put off the new TV or those cute jeans for a bit.  It won’t be easy – many people will lose their mortgages, cars, declare bankruptcy, but you’ll eat at least.  The poor, the real poor, the billion people who live on less then $1 a day – that sixth of the world is, to put it politely, fucked. Just like the last time, just like the next time, the poor take it on the chin whenever the Capitalist system over-invests in tulip bulbs.

Ok, so what does this have to do with Raul?  It seems a good enough time to reintroduce our protagonist.  When I met Raul, I was in Choluteca, Honduras, hitchhiking north to friendly faces and a roof.  He was lying in the street near the market, facedown with an arm stretched dangerously close to the choking line of buses, trucks, taxis slogging through the narrow dirty streets.  In his hand, a small bottle of Catrachito, cheap gut-rot liquor, hinted at the cause.  I didn’t intend to meet him, I just wanted to move his arm out of the road, but as I did so he sat up with a start, scaring the hell out of me and coughing booze-scented pleghm on his dirty clothes.  I convinced him to move with me, and we sat in the shade of a nearby shop and shared a cigarette.

“Why,” I asked him after he told me his awful tale, “why are you doing this to yourself?  What about your family?”

He spat in the dirt. “My wife does not receive my calls.  She told me that she is sorry, but she needs a man who can support the children.”  He put his head in his hands, wracked by sorrow but still too proud to cry openly.

“Raul, why drink?  Surely there is something better, no?”  I asked so many variations of this, brought in God when I had to, but nothing penetrated his dark clouded eyes.  There was one phrase he kept repeating that hurts me still – I’ll try to translate it as best I can.

“I have worked like a slave my entire life.  All my life.  What good is there?”

He stared at me, and I could only shake my head – I don’t know.

I don’t know anything – I came down here looking for reality and truth, and I’ve found bucketloads, but none that penetrates quite like the poverty, the hopeless, lifelong, humanity-draining poverty.  It isn’t just Raul, it’s nearly everyone – coming from the US I had studied the victims of our economic policies, but I wasn’t prepared for the sights I’d see, the people I’d meet, the guilt and helplessness I would feel confronted with it all.  The mind rages – there must be a better way!  We’re not trying to help these people – how could we when we don’t even know they exist?  The poor, starving, dying, have no value in a system that cares only for productivity, shaving costs, trimming staff – maximizing profits has replaced human decency, and we all lose.

And yet… I’m no better.  After our talk, cigarette, and a few mouthfuls of water, I bid farewell to Raul, mouthed “I’m sorry” to his pleading eyes and outstretched hand, turned and walked away.  I had a bus to catch, a friend to meet, a hot meal and a shower waiting for me on the other end.  There are a billion Rauls, a billion humans like you and me out there trying and crying and dying to live.  There’s a way to help them, the means exist, but the will – that’s where we fall flat.  There isn’t any profit in keeping the poor alive, at least not one comparable to corporate piracy and waging aggressive war, and so until we change this fucked up system we live in, the Rauls of the world have to die – the bottom line demands it.

-k

Various Thoughts on Terrorism

It wouldn’t be my style to go too long without a random philosophical tangent that nobody really wants to read, and since this one was actually a class assignment in Spanish, it seems only appropriate that I write about my position on terrorism and terrorists for a bit. Plus, I’m sure it’ll make me some new enemies in the form of people who label me “naive” and “someone who needs to see the real world.” My preemptive response to you is that I’m living in a world much more real, much more difficult then you are, and I’m seeing the result of real terrorism, economic and political terrorism, every day of my life. Plus, I’m a million miles away, so your emotions aren’t going to reach me without losing their impact. That said, love to hear your responses on twitter (citizen_k) or on my blog, or at citizenk dot blog at gmail dot com. Bear in mind that if you are stupid, unable to argue logically, or use the terms “Nazi,” “appeasement,” or “post-9/11 world” in your response, I will definitely mock you publicly. So here we go, some random arguments on terrorism, terrorists, and the difference between a soldier and a terrorist.

First, I suppose we need a working definition of terrorism. The difficulty is that the word has become so commonplace in society today that it has taken on a variety of meanings. An accurate, non-fearmongering, non-anti-arab definition of terrorism can be stated roughly as follows: terrorism is a tactic of warfare (or fighting if you wish to raise the objection that warfare implies states and state-actors) that relies on instilling fear in one’s enemies, and one’s enemies’ friends and neighbors, in order to achieve one’s goals. An example of terrorism in practice would be a campaign in which a group of actors, state, state-sponsored, or completely independent, begins a coordinated bombing campaign of popular bars and nightclubs in a city, with the aim of reducing night life in their city. The reason for this course of action is unimportant to this example. The tactic of bombing popular areas filled with average citizens is employed not to kill those citizens, but to convey a message that all “average citizens” who frequent nighttime activities in the area are at risk. Thus, fear is used to influence the behavior of citizens, causing them to abandon the bars and clubs, and destroy the nightlife in much the same what that razing all of the buildings to the ground would have done, but cheaper, with less equipment and personnel, and without requiring superior forces. Thus let us add to the definition of terrorism a clause about cost, ease of acquiring desired results, and feasibility of use by small groups. Putting what I have written here together, a more inclusive definition of terrorism might be stated thusly:

Terrorism: a financially cheap and low-resource fighting tactic that relies on the instillation of fear in an enemy population to achieve one’s goals not by force, but by dissuading one’s enemies from behaving as they would normally would due to fear of retribution, harm, or loss, financial, bodily, or otherwise.

It is important to note here that the terrorist does seek fear (terror) as a goal, but instead uses it as a means to advance his goals, or to push a society toward the terrorists’ position in much the same way that a nation-state might use a “shock and awe” or “blitzkreig” campaign to instill terror in its opponent. In all cases, the goal is not the fear, but the paralysis, uncertainty, and unconscious behavioral modification that comes with a fearful state of existence. Those afraid are easily controlled and manipulated, and since this is not uncommon knowledge, the use of “terrorist” tactics, at least by this definition, are in widespread use today, and not just by the groups the US government labels as “terrorists.”

With this definition, who are the terrorists? The groups using terrorist tactics are myriad, but their goal, behavioral modification and self-limitation of freedom by the target group, is the same regardless of race, ethnicity, political affiliation, or means. The guerrilla fighter group that beheads all males in a nearby village because one member of that village aided their enemy is certainly using using terrorist tactics to achieve their goal. (Presumably to discourage other villages from aiding enemies of the group.) Moreover, this sort of activity is easily determined to be of the terrorist variety. However, what of less shocking, more commonplace examples? What is the lower bound of terrorism? Ought we restrict use of the term only to certain activities? Do actual results matter, or only goals? I will try to address these all in due time.

A more confusing example of terrorist activity can be found in the campaigns of baby formula companies in Latin America. Utilizing this area’s weak governments and even weaker corporate legal frameworks, these companies have spent decades on an extremely aggressive series of advertisements that portray mothers’ milk as unsafe, formula as a better substitute, and all but state that not using their product is harmful to the health of one’s infant. As a result of this, large cross-sections of the people do not nurse their children, childhood obesity rates are through the roof, adult obesity, cardio-pulmonary disease rates are skyrocketing, children suffer from weakened immune systems due to not receiving critical immunities from their mothers (which raises early childhood mortality rates) and the overall health, prosperity, and wealth-generation of these nations suffer. Oh, and some baby formula companies make an absolute killing, having convinced mothers to replace a better, free, healthier, naturally-occurring PART OF THEIR BODIES with an expensive, unhealthy, inadequate substitute. It’s awful, it’s inhumane, but is it an act of terrorism?

The tactic used in this fight (between mothers not buying their products and mothers doing so) is certainly fear. Fear of unhealthy babies, fear of being a bad mother, fear of doing something different then what the “experts” say one ought to. Fear is a central element to the campaigns to get mothers using baby formulas, and so in that aspect it definitely qualifies. The companies use no force to persuade mothers to use their products, and their goal is not the fear, but the behavior (buying baby formula) that this fear leads to. Thus, this sort of ad campaign appears to qualify under this definition of terrorism.

However, I would imagine that many people have a big problem using the word terrorism to describe the actions of these companies. This objection probably stems from the fact that it is very difficult to reconcile a baby being too fat, growing up with the resultant health problems, and dying an early death from an obesity-related disease with a person having their head cut off or being blown up outside of a nightclub. The means utilized in both instances is fear, but the intermediate means (what they do to instill fear) and the unwanted result (fat babies versus dead people) are vastly different, and that leads many people to reject the comparison. But are they really so different?

Is not the baby formula company responsible for the health problems, obesity, and early death of those babies raised drinking it? Shouldn’t the company be held, if not fiscally or legally, at least morally responsible for these problems? After all, their business is, in convincing the uneducated and gullible, through fear, to use a shoddy, expensive, and knowingly-inferior product in lieu of a perfectly good one that they already have, and they do so by preying on the love of every mother for her child. Without their interference, the incidence of women using formula in lieu of breastfeeding would most definitely be lower, if it occurred at all, which it wouldn’t if these companies didn’t persist in making their products. While on a single-incident basis this cannot compare to a beheading, or a suicide bombing, surely scale must come into play. Violent acts of terrorism, according to International Red Cross statistics that I cannot access because I don’t have regular Internet access but read a while ago when I did, killed several thousand people last year. How many people died in Latin America due to obesity-related diseases that stemmed from their early childhood? How many infants and young children died because they weren’t receiving the necessary nutrients and antibodies from their mothers? How many people spend their lives unhappy with their looks, with their bodies, simply because these companies decided to create a niche for a product that nobody should use save as a last resort, market it as a wonder-drug cure-all and make themselves rich in the process. I don’t have those statistics; likely nobody does. There’s no concrete way of measuring it, but from what I’ve seen down here, and from what I’ve read and learned, obesity is an epidemic sweeping the area, and early-infancy diet has lasting effects on the remainder of one’s life. While the actions of the baby formula companies aren’t flashy or gory, they are certainly fear-reliant and seek behavioral modification, and thus they are correctly labeled as acts of terror.

Now for something even more controversial. The actions of states in times of war, and oftentimes in times of “peace” are just as much acts of terrorism as those of the suicide bomber. The state uses fear in all actions during war in order to maintain discipline, patriotism, and a willingness to sacrifice in its people. This is not new – it stems from the tribalistic need to band together with those most like yourself in times of need – and tinpot dictators for all of human history have invoked threats of outsiders and those different to cement their rule. States are always guilty of using fear of “the other” to maintain their position at the apex of so-called legitimate society. I cannot stress this enough – fear is one of the great motivators, perhaps the greatest, and its use has been one of the pillars of every form of government that has ever existed on this planet. When times get hard, or when a state wishes to act in a way contrary to the wishes of its citizenry, it will invariably turn to fear to quell dissent and change public opinion.

The soldier is an instrument of fear. He is a tool by which the state can either maintain fear internally, or spread fear to other parts of the world. His job is not so much to kill, but to kill in such a way that he demolishes the power structure of the enemy in its entirety. When the soldiers have finished, those left alive ought to be willing to throw themselves at the feet of the soldiers and the mercy of the state because they fear for their lives and those of their families. This is why the crusaders slaughtered the populace of Jerusalem, why the allies carpet-bombed Dresden and incinerated Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, why the United States massacred Iraqi troops fleeing Kuwait in the first Gulf War, and used “Shock and Awe” tactics against Baghdad in the second. If one searched history, these examples are but drops in the bucket of state terrorism. The simple act of killing sends a message, surely, but the act of utterly destroying a group or location, not restricting violence to combatants and instead killing soft, civilian targets is intended to strike terror into the hearts of a people. By having its soldiers utilize the weapon of terror, a state can modify behavior, crush dissent, and pacify those whom it wishes to control. Terror insures true victory, true subjugation, of one’s enemies.

On the homefront, a soldier is a useful weapon in state terrorism as well. He serves as a symbol, both of the power of the state, and as an ever-present reminder to the populace of the dark, scary, dangerous world that he is protecting them from. The soldier reinforces the message of the state by his very presence, and that message is “the world is dangerous: be afraid, give your freedom to us and we will protect you.” The soldier is an instrument of terror against the people in his state as much as those in neighboring states. He is the face of the beast, the grinning pop-out skull in the haunted house, the gritty, in-your-face reminder of the power of the state. The soldier is used at home to quell dissent, pump up nationalistic thought, to make the people give away their rights instead of the state having to take them by force. Here again terror, specifically the fear of the other, is used to modify the behavior of the people toward that which is easier to control, easier to manipulate, easier to quash when it does not meet the needs of the state. The soldier is the most professional, most well-trained, most efficient of terrorists, and his brand of terror has the backing of a nation.

Two differences is normally granted to the soldier, first that he is merely doing as he is ordered to, and would face penalties if he did not kill, and second that his actions are legitimized by the state. Both of these differences do not hold up to examination, and ironically it is the state-centric legal system that supports my position. First, the soldier’s orders do not legitimize his actions any more then the terrorists’. Both face strong penalties (the terrorist possibly stronger) for refusing to act thusly, they both likely joined their organizations voluntarily (excluding conscription) and they both are beholden to morality regardless of their orders. This final point is proven beyond a doubt in the Nuremburg trials after World War II, where the orders of a state or government were found insufficient to excuse the actions of those on trial. International standards of morality, respect for the basic human dignity, and right to life were found to have greater authority then any state actor, and there were a fair handful of death sentences at Nuremburg. One of the great tragedies of history is that we, the United States of America, one of the nations most responsible for injecting the rule of law into international relations to prevent warfare, have publicly abandoned this position of late and reverted to the use of terrorism and armed force to enforce our opinions. (Not that we don’t have a history of this, but that is beyond the scope of this essay.)

To review: both the soldier and the terrorist are likely voluntarily affiliated with their organization, and if they are not, the terrorist is probably more likely to have been forced to enter service. (You don’t see many 12-13 year olds with AK-47s in the US army, but they appear all the time in terrorist organizations.) They both will be penalized for refusing to act, and since modern militaries rarely shoot/kill their own as punishment for disobeying, the terrorist faces higher penalties here as well. Finally, all fighters, state-affiliated or otherwise, are obligated under international law to morally adhere to a code which puts human life and dignity above all else, and thus both sin equally in their kills. (I would further argue that this is not a matter of voluntary association, but of moral obligation. The taking of another human life in all contexts except self-preservation is morally wrong.) Thus the defining difference between the two is that the soldier is tied to a nation, represents said nation in his actions, and is protected and supported by the power, reputation, and resources of that self-same nation. In return, the soldier is given a level of protection from retribution for his actions, a justification for killing, a shield to deflect his human guilt at his actions. Beyond these superficial differences, the function of both the non-state terrorist and the soldier are the same – to control the behavior of some group through threats and fear.

What then can we conclude about terrorism? I think the wise conclusion would be to realize that terrorists and terror tactics are much more commonplace then we would normally assume, and that we are ourselves subjected to all sorts of fear-based marketing, behavioral modification, and control on a regular basis. Further, with our (tacit) blessing, the nations of the world, especially the industrialized military powerhouses, engage regularly in terroristic tactics to control natural resources, quell the self-determination of peoples, and maintain their positions of dominance/legitimacy. Finally, the most important conclusion here is that terrorism is a buzzword, a phrase that is itself used to invoke terror, to manipulate public opinion, and to delegitimize one’s opponents. Thus, we must be very careful in whom we call terrorists, and not forget to examine the motives of those willing to label others with the term. One may call a group or individual terrorist(s) but that oversimplifies that such groups cannot survive without the support of someone – it would be more productive to examine whom is lending that support, as this will give a better idea of what sort of group one is truly dealing with. This will then lead to strategies of dealing with said “terrorists” successfully, using appropriate means, and without turning the local population against you.

Please question your leaders, for unless you are billionaire investor who has financed their campaign, they do not have your best interests at heart. Terror is not the exclusive territory of poor brown people with bombs strapped to their chest, and the governments of the world are far more adept at it then any of the terror cells our leaders pay trillions of our dollars to fight. Think about it.