I don’t understand what we’re doing in this country anymore.
When I was younger, the United States felt like a land of endless opportunity — a place where I could do and be anything I wanted to. It was a place of freedom, where you could speak your mind without having to worry about the consequences.
But this once beautiful land feels barren. It feels like there’s no hope or opportunity here. It feels like a wasteland of propaganda, self-righteousness and hate.
It seems like propaganda is everywhere now. In the time since President Donald Trump took office, I feel like I’ve seen more pro-U.S. government propaganda than I’d previously seen in my whole life.
Federal agencies like The U.S. departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Justice and many others began a coordinated effort to spread partisan political messages from official government websites. Many department sites contained a banner that accused the congressional radical left of shutting the government down.
The military propaganda is the worst of it. When did our culture become conditioned to glean pride from war or even begin to associate the two? The War of 1812 is the most clear example of the shift between the U.S.’s pride in its independence and pride as a consequence of war.
Following the 1807 Chesapeake-Leopard affair — where a British ship attacked and raided the U.S.S. Chesapeake, killing U.S. soldiers in search of deserters — a group of congressmen dubbed the “War Hawks” began speaking out, labeling the War of 1812 as a “Second War of Independence.”
When war became centered around this concept of independence and freedom, the U.S. began to take great pride in war and its effects, even though very few actually wanted to go to war with Britain. And now, this problem is exacerbated; not only is the president initiating conflicts without congressional approval, now, citizens aren’t even going to be given a choice in whether or not they serve in the military or participate in these conflicts.
By December, U.S. men will be automatically registered for the draft for the first time since 1973. There’s been efforts to normalize, and even encourage, the idea of joining the military. And it isn’t limited to things typically seen as masculine, either. It’s everywhere.
Brandy Melville, a popular clothing brand among predominantly young women, recently dropped a number of new pieces draped in the style of classic military camouflage.
The traditional military camo was created during World War I by two French designers who were members of the French Sixth Artillery Regiment. They hid their guns in bushes by painting them various shades of green and brown, then created new coats and pants for artillery men to wear in the same colors, a replacement for the original blue uniforms.
From 2010 Tumblr’s obsession with army green bomber jackets and combat boots to influxes of clothing styled in classic military camo patterns, the fashion world deeply connects to the militarization of our society.
During the 1960s-70s progressive movement, anti-war activists claimed camo in protest, reclaiming it for political reasons. From the 1980s-90s, grungy and rebellious individuals donned camo to showcase their independence. Following this, many U.S. brands — Gap, Wrangler, Target, Walmart and L.L. Bean — began selling camo-patterned products, where L.L. Bean popularized the usage of camo for hunting and casual wear.
By marketing camo wear as a desired or cool style, military fashion makes consumers susceptible to militarization processes and pro-military propaganda. Military fashion works to glorify war and the military, as well as covering up the violent tendencies and ideals associated with war and militant systems. War is impure, bloody and death-riddled; however, by making war and the military a marketable product, people are easily swayed in approval of it and often forget the true horrors of war.
Even more so, military fashion is highly gendered. It plays on men’s natural desire and instinct to be seen as masculine, powerful, capable and strong in a heroic, G.I. Joe style. When translated into women’s clothing, it serves an identical purpose — that women can share the same powerful and violent strength typically associated with the notion of a “male military hero.”
While selling shirts, pants or hats with pro-military decals or text isn’t that outlandish, the placement of it is what makes it so concerning. It doesn’t really make sense where they are in the store — I mean, next to polka dotted, feminine pajama sets? Military camo print underwear?
If it was just to encourage men to enlist, it wouldn’t gravitate into and around feminine-marketed products, nor a typically feminine store. It’s not like most men are walking around wearing Brandy Melville tank tops, are they?
Not only is this popularization of camouflage in casualwear pushing a positive narrative around the concept of the military — and more extensively, war — but it’s also trying to normalize military depictions in commercially women-centered spaces, whether to encourage women to be alright with being a “military wife” or to enlist themselves. Just because they slap a bow on a pair of military camo print underwear doesn’t mean it will erase what it’s really trying to sell.
The military is far from a graceful or favorable program. While I support veterans and those who choose to fight for our country, the U.S. itself has zero care for them.
As of 2024, the point-in-time or PIT count — the estimated number of Americans, including Veterans, without safe, stable housing — highlighted that 32,882 veterans experienced homelessness, with almost 14,000 of them experiencing unsheltered homelessness. 7.6% of veterans live below the poverty line, amounting to 1.2 million veterans across the U.S.
There’s a variety of reasons for this high percentage of veteran poverty — physical or mental disabilities, delays or gaps in accessing military-related benefits, lack of affordable housing, employment barriers, limited support and assistance, mental health conditions as a result of military service and substance use. One in four veterans also report struggling with food insecurity.
Trump wants to increase the favorability of the military and begin automatically signing men up for the draft, but he doesn’t want to provide any new or improved support to veterans.
It’s no secret that positive feelings towards the military leads to higher rates of enlistment. Individuals with parents or family members that served in the military are more likely to enlist and are more likely to serve for longer periods. Enlistment rates are also higher in areas with larger percentages of veteran populations, such as Southern states.
An even larger contributor to high enlistment rates is the perpetuation of “honor culture.”
Honor culture refers to an internal and external quality of high self-worth and pride. Within an honor culture, people have a higher tendency to rely on their reputation to protect themselves and their social status. Individuals who participate in honor cultures respond to perceived social threats to their honor with aggression and violence. Because those within an honor culture hold themselves to such a high standard, their beliefs about honor directly influence their behavior and interactions with others.
By perpetuating an honor culture, the U.S. generates reliance on an individual’s capacity to prove themselves as worthy. Pairing this psychological and cultural influence with a person’s family history of military service or geographical status, many of those who enlist do so because they feel as though they need to prove their honor to their country.
Furthering the struggle with propaganda, artificially generated images and videos of air strikes or attacks on Iran have surfaced on apps such as TikTok and X. Not only do we have to worry about our own government spreading disinformation, but now there’s a possibility that it’s entirely AI-generated.
The unfortunate truth of it all is that people are more susceptible to propaganda than they think. Sure, it may be funny to laugh at AI-generated Lego propaganda videos made by the Iranian government — which feels dystopian to even acknowledge as a real thing — but the casualness of propaganda is what scares me the most.
Government systems aren’t making silly or satirical propaganda content to make Generation X or baby boomers laugh. They know that some of the younger generations’ brains are so fried that they’re incapable of comprehending that they’re even being indoctrinated. By making it funny, people hardly think about the implications of it, because at least they’re entertained.
As much as I hated having to read “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman during my first semester, the longer this presidency continues, the more I find myself agreeing with Postman about every single line in that book. Because, really, all we are doing anymore is amusing ourselves to death.
Postman put it best saying, “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
The U.S. has merely become a puppet show for each and every citizen within its borders. Our president is a jester, performing for elites on a worldwide stage. Whether any of us want to or not, we are all watching him — it’s like a car wreck. I just can’t look away, and neither can anyone else. And, because we’re all so busy looking at Trump, we don’t even see or process the death of our culture on the horizon.
