The US military has been having meeting enlistment quotas these past few years. The government’s response to the virus scare deserves its share of the blame. So do rising obesity rates among fighting age Americans. But browse a few of the news pieces lamenting low recruitment, and you’ll notice that they all take care to talk around the elephant in the room.
It’s no leap of logic to point out that a volunteer military relies on a healthy store of patriotism to drive recruitment. That’s why the US military has long relied on the South as a recruitment pool. Southerners have a venerable military tradition at least dating back to their Cavalier roots. It makes sense that they’d be overrepresented in the armed forces.
But to the military’s dismay, that wellspring of patriotism has limits. It turns out that manipulating people by their virtues ends up eroding the foundation of those virtues. Hence the steady decline in American pride over the past two decades.
Note that pride in being American peaked soon after 9-11 and dropped off when the Global War on Terror devolved into a generational forever war. The lesson our cosmopolitan rulers should have learned is that patriotism is stoked by threats to the ashes of one’s fathers and the altars of one’s gods. It wilts when a people realize they’ve been had by cynical transnational conmen.
Of course, our rulers aren’t known for their originality; just their persistence. Some of them noticed that the original Top Gun boosted enlistment fivefold. It should come as no surprise that the military has similar hopes for the hit sequel.
Or perhaps they did more than just hope.
Meet Top Gun: Maverick producer David Ellison.
He’s the son of Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle.
What’s the significance of Oracle? Not only has the company been a CIA contractor from day one; it started as a CIA project, and its name is taken from the operation’s codename.
Here’s a blast from the past story, ca. the time American patriotism was cratering, wherein ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft was involved in high-stakes courtroom shenanigans with Oracle.
“Sure, ” you might be saying, “Oracle glows in the dark. But do they have any military interests?”
Oh, boy. Do they ever!
Skimming Oracle’s web site turns up that they supply cloud storage to the Defense Department. Here they are crowing about landing a billion-dollar Air Force contract.
The Air Force, by the way, produced a slick ad to be played before showings of Top Gun: Maverick.
The Empire’s business is war. And Oracle, their Hollywood hired guns, and the state know what’s good for business.
For military adventure stories that are sheer entertainment, not propaganda, check out my hit mech saga.
