Insanity II

Caught a bit of 60 Minutes earlier and noticed one of the ways our society really is insane:

Somehow, we determined it was a good thing to send new high school grads, who haven't been anywhere and know nothing about the world, into the military, where we'll pay tens or, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach them war, KNOWING some will be quickly killed...

BUT...

We require people to be older and have college degrees to join the Peace Corps, for which we pay substantially less in training despite the far more crucial tasks they have, such as teaching people how to farm or educating children. We essentially expect them to learn it on their own beforehand or in the field.

We advertise war in countless ways -- real ads, violent movies, military parades on certain holidays, recruiters visiting high schools -- but I can't recall the last time I saw a Peace Corps ad, and the last Peace Corps-related show was actually about the murder of a volunteer in the 1970s, not what they were actually doing.

I think this might have something to do with the apocalypse obsession that forms a constant but not always visible undercurrent to American thought, especially in this era of nuclear weapons where any war has had the potential (even if minimal) to spiral out of control into a nuclear exchange. But whether it's a cause or an effect, I don't know...