What radicalized me was definitely losing my father to the opioid crisis after the war machine chewed him up and spat him out, doing the same exact thing.
My late Father served in the 173rd Airborne in Vietnam. When I expressed interest in enlistment after 9/11 (I was in high school and thought I'd join right after I turned 18) he sat me down and showed me an album of photos he took during the war. Those photos still haunt me. I didn't join.
I was always bleeding heart, but working for the DoD helping veterans of the 1st Gulf War and being there when the 2nd started is what galvanized/radicalized me.
I was a young high school dropout with no discernable future. I was reading a ton of Camus and Sartre and post WWII existentialist stuff and I very naively thought it would be a "test of my mettle". I never believed in the political aspect of the war, but I believed in the idea of service.
Thank you for answering. 🖤 Some of my high school classmates went into service because "big guns kill 'em all." It's nice to know that not all of us are war hungry vultures. Idk, hard to fully articulate my thoughts on the military.
For me, it was having a basic sense of empathy and fairness under capitalism and the fallout of 9/11.
Seeing what we do in the world and that better and worse things are possible.
That was enough to radicalize me for life.
Comments
Seeing what we do in the world and that better and worse things are possible.
That was enough to radicalize me for life.