In a week of horrendously bad news mostly not covered by the corporate press — a train wreck in Ohio with a catastrophic chemical spill, and earthquake relief efforts hampered by U.S. sanctions on Syria — there was a little ray of light. 

Young people in the U.S. do not want to join the Army. 

Like, REALLY don’t want to.

Reporting on marketing-type research, Associated Press said that alleged “wokeness” bandied about in Congress as a reason has almost nothing to do with young people shunning enlistment.

The top reasons not to enlist were, in this order:

Fear of dying

Fear of PTSD

Not willing to leave friends and family

Not willing to put their life “on hold”

And 13% said they expected that women and people of color would experience discrimination in the Army. 

Furthermore,

Many young people do not know anyone in the Army and are unfamiliar with the jobs or benefits it offers. [Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, head of Army marketing] said trust in government institutions, including the military, has declined, particularly among this group.

“They just don’t perceive the Army as being in touch with the modern, everyday culture that they’re used to,” he said.

Fink said about 10% in the surveys say they do not trust military leadership, based on the way recent events or missions have been handled. That could include the Afghanistan withdrawal or use of the military during racial unrest and protests in the United States.

These surveys were conducted before the Super Bowl ran a misleading video about former NFL player Pat Tillman and his death in Afghanistan. Killed by friendly fire after he turned against the war? Oops, they forgot to mention that.

With WW3 against China and Russia at the same time gathering clouds on the horizon, it’s an inconvenient time for truth. 

So Seymour Hersh’s article detailing the who, what, where, when, and why of the NordStream pipeline sabotage was either ignored or ridiculed by the corporate press. Except when the weasly spokesman for the U.S. State Department was directly challenged about it at a press conference. 

Honestly, I’m surprised that Ned Price’s nose did not grow right on camera for these whoppers.

UK journalist Craig Murray commented on the silencing of the most accomplished investigative reporter of his generation in “Sy Hersh: The Way We Live Now“:

I learnt something very important about how the Big Lie works.

The secret is not that people genuinely believe an outrageous claim. The secret is that people do genuinely believe that they are in a battle of good against evil, and it is necessary to accept the narrative being promoted, in the interests of fighting evil.

Don’t question, just follow. If you do question, you are promoting evil.

I am sure that is how it works.

State and corporate stenographer journalists are actually intelligent individuals. If they thought about it, they would realise that the narrative that Russia blew up its own pipeline is obvious nonsense.

But they are convinced it is morally wrong to think about it.

Then a little more truth leaked out, this time over the Russiagate deception, in an article by reporter Jeff Gerth in a pretty mainstream publication, the Columbia Journalism Review. An excerpt:

it’s notable that Gerth got Bob Woodward, journalism’s original movie star, to go on record castigating the business over its Trump-Russia reporting. Woodward told Gerth he believed the coverage “wasn’t handled well,” and “urged newsrooms to ‘walk down the painful road of introspection.’” He also described to Gerth how he tried to warn “people who covered this” in the Washington Post newsroom away from certain stories, only to be met with shrugs. “To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity..

the legacy press is still mostly trying to ignore the CJR article. To be fair, dealing with its implications would require a cleanup/retraction process on a scale the business has probably never seen.

Bottom line: propagandists and former journalists can dick around all day telling half truths or denying real truths while still raking in big paychecks.

But young people asked to put their life on the line for the U.S. war machine are not easily fooled. And that is good news, indeed.