the military & politics

I believe the shift of those coming out of military service to the alt-right is something that is natural. Not only that, but I believe it's proof that war is not compatible with the natural human state.

The natural human state, when both economics and religion are stripped away, is not one inclined to racism. In fact, I would argue it's the very opposite, considering that to be racist is to not cooperate with certain others; the very antithesis of humanity. Due to our current state of the world, however, this sort of mindset is very much possible.

Then, if racism is not becoming of a human, neither then is war. The natural human (that is, one without ailment of morality) recoils and cringes away from much of any cruelty. The conscious mind finds itself disgusted, on instinct. Humans don't like looking at others die and suffer, not any more than they like causing that death and suffering. Those then, on the front lines, find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. The armed forces are the tangible representation of decisions made in law offices, and each unit is made up of human minds. A mind that finds itself at odds with the cruelty ordered of it.

No more do humans like cruelty than they like feeling uncomfortable. Dozens of our earliest inventions (after those that aid in life, of course) serve only the purpose of comfort. The civilized person hates the morally uncomfortable, and will do much to get rid of this feeling. It can manifest itself as activism, in career, or, more negatively, an action that they can then use to convince themselves that they have 'done what they have to'. But there can also be a different way of coping with what we know to be wrong. To do with what is wrong and to do it again and again, and to want it without the itch one feels when they know they are committing sin, many convince themselves it is right. In simpler terms; to make doing what is wrong easy, you convince yourself it is right. Those in the armed forces have to feel right.

This idea then easily explains the shift to the alt-right. The alt-right offers the comfortable explanation, in hundreds of different ways. They (they being those who are being killed) are ruining our country, it's for their own good, they're monsters/subhuman/committing some other transgression, etc. It's needless to point out examples considering this strategy is so pervasive. Even these ideas are, of course, easily disproved and oftentimes, still don't sit perfectly right. But they fill a square-shaped hole with a squircle-shaped block. It is comforting enough. Enough is notoriously good enough for humanity. But this idea lives on a veneer, always getting closer and closer to the edge.

People need to make themselves feel good about war. This is an impossible goal. Humanity cannot make themselves feel good about war. What they can do, however, is trick themselves and internalize a lie so many times that it begins to seem like truth.