What is America's purpose right now?

Because we keep being offered images of the past to elicit future sacrifice

We are told, rather hyperbolically, that “Americans don’t want to fight for their country anymore.” [NOTE TO SELF: Newsweek stopped being a serious news source a while ago.]

How do we know? The long-ago legit journal cited a recent poll that indicated most young people abstractly passed on serving in a “major conflict,” which I guarantee you was widely interpreted as direct large-scale warfare with either Russia or China — or a worse version of Iraq.

So, no one is interested in signing up for WWIII. Imagine that!

Our young people are presently unsold on the notion of dying in significant numbers for either Ukraine or Taiwan, while Israel-v-Hamas looks right out of the Hunger Games’s climactic battle-scape. This is the world they’re being presented right now: not a direct attack on the US, which would change things just like 9/11 did, but our decision to “enter” a “major conflict” presumably triggered by one or more of these scenarios.

And they’re not buying those futures.

Hard to blame them. Most of the Global South remains uninterested in Ukraine, while most of the world is coming down hard on the US for its support of Israel. In combination, they can easily seed the impression among our young that the US is out of step with the larger world. Washington can pretend it speaks for the international community, but most of the time that is simply untrue.

Whatever we’re about now, it ain’t the future.

These conflicts, along with the potential one of Taiwan, have to strike most young people as chronic situations inherited from the past, as all of them have histories that stretch back decades — or basically to the aftermath of WWII. So, when pollsters posit that uncontextualized leapfrog into WWIII, it has to feel to younger generations like a knee-jerk reaction on the part of their elders.

I mean, look at it from the upcoming generations’ perspectives: they’ve been subject to near-constant declarations of “global war,” “the war on X,” a “new Cold War,” and the coming “World War III” throughout their lives. With an around-the-clock American mediascape crammed with Chicken Littles declaring the sky’s collapse (Existential threat! Chaos! End times! Zombie apocalypse! Civil war! Satanists running our government!), it would be far more disturbing if polls suggested that younger generations would sheepishly line up for killing and/or slaughter without any clear and gripping enunciation of national intent.

To put it frankly, America seems mentally ill right now, and who wants to follow that disturbed character into war?

The same would apply, I would argue, for military service in general during an era when America possesses no clear national vision of the future and thus no clear national purpose. In the absence of both, what exactly do we expect our younger generations to sign up for? Decades of thwarting China’s rise? A repeat Cold War with Russia? More “forever wars” in the Middle East? Or best yet, our soon-to-be-scheduled military invasion of Mexico to stem the rising tide of — per the Right wing’s preferred trifecta — drug smugglers, terrorists, and otherwise blood poisoning migrants?

Does the mission of shoot ’em all at the border attract anybody you’d like to see in our military right now? Anyone whom our military leadership would like to see in uniform right now?

Meanwhile, Washington outside of the Biden administration evinces little to no interest in thinking and acting ahead when it comes to the one global threat that our young people can clearly agree on and are willing to engage — namely, climate change. Give them something to sign up for concerning that!

Climate change is a very forward-leaning crisis, compared to the chronic and never-ending scenarios represented by Russia picking on its neighbors, Israel and Palestine locked in a death match, and China threatening Taiwan. The tyranny of that collective present, it would seem, disables our leadership’s capacity to think ahead to any significant degree.

Either that or our national leaders — quite frankly — have no vision besides maintaining their hold on power and stemming America’s continuing loss of global standing.

So what is our national vision now? What are we building? What world are we seeking to create — much less lead? Why should any nation follow us right now?

More to this point: Why should our young people sacrifice their careers — much less their lives — for such a confused state of affairs throughout our national leadership cohort? Given the way Washington is behaving right now, I wouldn’t sign my dog up for any of their wars — real or rhetorical. There is simply too little trust between leaders and the led to expect otherwise.

I saw an Ohio license plate today with a Purple Heart on it and the summary designation of the “Global War on Terror.” When you have that sort of focus, plenty of sound people will sign up and serve.

So, what will history call this period? What license plate can you imagine spotting 10-15 years from now? The National War on Transgenders? Any takers for that existential threat? And, of those ready to do so, whom would you feel comfortable following into a major conflict on the other side of the planet — much less sending your kids?

No, you can’t credibly imagine that license plate right now, not with our internal political polarization and bizarro culture wars dominating all — my favorite example today being the Ohio legislature’s Republican extremists vowing to ignore the will of the people (mine included) just expressed in a strong majority (57-43%) for the codification of abortion rights in our state’s constitution (yet another vote the far Right loses and then declares invalid for make-believe reasons).

With that sort of craziness going on at home, it really isn’t weird that younger generations are ambivalent about laying down their lives for anything Washington is selling right now.

Again, I’d be far more worried if they were ready to do so.