I wanna to be an Airborn Ranger. I wanna live a life of danger…

So goes one the of the military chants that occur during training sessions for our service members. Since WWII and the Vietnam conflict, which ended in 1975, our military has been an all volunteer operation. During the Vietnam era, the draft was in effect. The military draft could once again be activated, although I don’t think it will ever again be something American young men, over 18, need worry about. Why? Well, that military operation lasted ten years. During that time, the print and electronic media still practiced something resembling “journalism”. You know. Get the facts. Check it out first. Don’t go with the story without stone-cold facts. Who, what, where, when, why and how based on the facts.

During the Vietnam clash, body counts were reported on a regular basis–provided by the military. Typically, the American public would hear daily news updates of dozens or hundreds of Viet Cong dead each day, with minimal (in comparison) U.S. soldiers becoming casualties. Eventually, the math didn’t add up for the American public as that engagement dragged on. And on. Print and electronic media reported and showed the factual reality of the war, with some degree of graphic intensity. The anti-war sentiment became increasingly bolstered by large protests and young men burning their draft cards in defiance.

Nearly 59,000 of our U.S. combatants died by the time all troops were recalled. The North Vietnam forces thus succeeded in taking over the South. A lot of those dead soldiers were draftees. Mostly from working class families. Urban Blacks and Hispanics, along with working class whites from the big cities and backwoods regions of the country. Now, sadly, many of those draftees have their names carved into the Vietnam Memorial. They died for…what exactly? The draftee’s attitude about becoming a member of the military was of no concern to the draft boards. Except for those who fled the country or were jailed for refusing induction, the draftee raised his right hand and accepted being sworn in. After that, it was a roll of Fate’s dice as to what awaited them.

Recently, I visited an exhibit on the Tet Offensive, a major escalation of the Vietnam conflict in early 1968. That’s when the Viet Cong staged a surprise attack on American forces in South Vietnam. It took several weeks for the American troops to push back the offensive. Although the North Vietnam military ultimately lost that battle, it aided in the aforementioned weakening of the American public’s support for the conflict, as it flew in the face of those hugely one-sided body counts the Pentagon used while assuring the public the U.S. was on it’s way to soon winning the war. The exhibit, with photos by photojournalist John Olson are quite powerful. Some are very graphic. Audio testimonies from survivors of that offensive add powerful emotion to the visuals on display.

War is hell. Any war. Anytime. Anywhere. But viewing this exhibit while understanding the outcome of that deployment and its ultimate failure to succeed exemplifies the inevitable collective and personal hell that is any combat experience. Losing Vietnam wasn’t the fault of those fighting that war–before and after the Tet Offensive played out. That failure, with tens of thousands of casualties, was the fate awaiting one and all, from any buck private “newbie” to the seasoned generals following the ineffective strategies of the Pentagon.

Thus, if any good came from that flawed fight for democracy over communism, it very likely is knowing a draft isn’t ever again probable. Barring perhaps an invasion from Mars. And meaningful, hard-hitting journalism might never return either.

In journalism schools, I doubt the training includes reciting I wanna be a real reporter; I wanna get the real story in order.

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Last Monday marked the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks by Saudi and Afghan terrorists. Always a somber anniversary. The ramifications of that “second Pearl Harbor” these twenty-two years later, include a Homeland Security Act, The Patriot Act and a clear erosion of personal privacy for all citizens, as it dramatically increased surveillance power. Sure, our smart phones track our every move, but there were no smart phones when the two above-named Acts came into existence. We’ve been backsliding as far as democracy goes ever since 911. Smart phones are now extensions of our physical anatomies, and they do more than take and make phone calls. They connect us not so much to one another as serve as reality disrupters. They are soldiers for Big Tech, and their stealthy objective is to shape our beliefs, attitudes, opinions and behavior. Now, you can wear these disrupters on your wrist. If you want privacy, you need to toss the “smart watches,” smart phones, tablets, and laptops. Maybe that 65 inch smart screen TV, too. But who the hell dares do that? That would trigger an alert to Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. You could wind up in Gitmo for such low-tech insolence.

Clearly, the digital age is now in its Orwellian phase. Our personal data, once largely under the control of the individual (you know pre-“smart” this and that and this that), is now part of myriad on-line systems, including retail and banking information, The digital Big Brother is forever more watching. From cyberspace. Which is everywhere and nowhere all at once. And this Bro’s data gatherings are subject to the hacker masters that he has spawned. We are watched, and we are aware that we have virtually no ability to push back on it at this point unless one goes rogue. What is safe any longer in the digitized universe? The Pentagon has been hacked. Airlines. Banks. Retail companies and on and on. Digital Big Brother is a snoop and a sneak and a thief. Does the U.S. government run this operation or is it the other way around? If 911 never happened would we still be this deep in the grip of digital Big Bro? Did 911 just speed up the corrosion of personal privacy, data breaches, stolen identities, and worse of all an ongoing diminishment of our democracy?

The cruel irony of 911 also includes it leading to an invasion of Iraq, under the now factually verified canard that that country was part of the terror attack. The war drums banged away, most of congress gave the invasion a thumbs up, as did virtually all of the mainstream mass media. The military, akin to its being deployed to Kuwait in Gulf War One, required print and electronic media to be embedded with (in bed with…) the troop operations.

Recall the aforementioned Vietnam War being covered by reporters who practiced real journalism? After Vietnam and certainly since Gulf One and the Iraq invasion, there still isn’t much rigorous, serious, honest journalism being practiced in the U.S. Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable? Not very often, unless one digs deeper into the thickets of digital and print news organizations. You want the truth? You won’t find truth by following corporate “news”. And do not think Fox News is mostly responsible. The media may have directly helped end the Vietnam quagmire, but now it is aiding and abetting the destruction of democracy that has been under attack since long before 911, beginning with its fawning over a right-wing puppet named Ronald Reagan. Fast forward from January, 1981 (Reagan sworn in) past August 2, 1990 (Gulf One) past the Iraq invasion (2003 to 2011) and stop–momentarily–on 2015. The loss of mainstream, responsible journalism has permitted a steady procession of bad actors (Reagan, literally) to become office holders, with possibly the 2016 presidential election being the most egregious outcome of watered down reportage. As a consequence of the abject failure to cover that election fairly, we now have a grotesque cartoon character, he being an ex-president who was twice impeached and now as a civilian having been slapped with NINETY ONE criminal charges, but still being given massive amounts of free air time to spew threats at judges and others who dare try holding him to account. The media normalizes his behavior and dumbfounding status as the front-runner for the Republican nomination going into the 2024 election. Things indeed do fall apart. The center indeed cannot hold, as such. Logic and reason checked out and hit the road, a number of decades ago, along with its ability to underpin the Constitution and country-at-large.

So, here we are in September of 2023, twenty-two years out from the 911 terror attacks. The U.S. hasn’t been attacked by foreign enemies since then. Ironically, the enemy is now very much home grown. The media essentially currently prostitutes itself for sensation, and the more outrageous the sensation’s source the better. The inmates are running the asylum, clearly. Given the financial meltdown of 2008 and the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, the rise of A.I.’s dark side, inflation, national and some statewide politics being run by wannabee dictators, autocrats and theocrats, what will 2024 bring? Whatever it brings will depend on ending journalistic malpractice and its disregard for truth.

Maybe an invasion from Mars would be the sensation that demands an honest, sensible response. What’s the worst that could happen? We lose that war of the worlds? Another John Olson could document the carnage. War of the Worlds, endgame edition. Yeah, just come on down, Red Planet forces, maybe bring humanity together to love one another, or they clean our clock and then leave. Mission accomplished. Then their version of John Olson can have an exhibit. And we’d not have to worry about the future anymore, and what may come to pass. I don’t know about y’all but so much of the past is hard to recollect without wincing. What was that saying penned by James Joyce having to do with history and nightmares and needing to wake up?

I must stop now. Need to check Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, X, YouTube, WeChat, TikTok, What’sApp and my stock portfolio. And Big Digital Bro, you know all of the above is not to taken serious. It’s not really me, anyway. It’s ChatGPT. I’m sure YOU can detect bullshit from the facts, no? That’s jouranlism 101..