The Trouble with Minions

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

All the baddies in films seem to have a built-in posse of gang members--their minions-- that accompany them and make them powerful by carrying out their orders. And the baddies apparently have no difficulty recruiting them. 

But that's fiction, not reality. Most people--even those poor, desperate, and under duress--resist recruiters asking them to risk life and limb for someone who doesn't have at least something good to offer in all their badness. This may also motivate the oligarchy running the US to keep a good portion of the population poor--at least the oligarchs can rely on poverty to make people desperate.

It was the certainty that God and goodness was on our side that made recruiting soldiers for the American military so easy in the great World Wars. But that started to change when the Vietnam war came along. Compulsory minion-hood--the draft--was not received favorably by the population of recruits. Draft resistance made the "volunteer" military something equally inevitable. People seldom sign up to do empire building for its own sake. At least those recruitment bonuses do something to alleviate poverty.

The massive amount of propaganda that tells us cops are always good guys, and the military may have a few bad apples, but they're good guys too, that all gets swept aside in the heat of current events when it's finally clear that promoting genocide (Gaza) or proxy wars (Nicaragua, Ukraine) are on the agenda. 

I'd even suggest that Dr. Spock, who advised treating children humanely, was a contributor to minion-resistant youngsters. Who would put up with a rude drill sergeant? The Private Benjamin film announced this too was ending.

One might even conclude the difficulty of recruiting minions to do mean things is one of the primary reasons to avoid doing mean things in statecraft. While it's nice to be good for goodness' sake, it's even better to be good so recruits don't resist recruiting, or, once recruited, don't get rid of their commanders with "friendly" fire.

David Graeber observed that states are always ambiguously a utopian project and an extortion racket. Why extortion? If nothing else, they always have to collect taxes, or their primary means of action--money--is valueless. Lately, the utopian aspect of the American project ("give me your huddled masses yearning to breath free") is taking a back seat to the extortion. And extortion may be successful for a bit, but it will ultimately fail because no one will re-enlist. 

This may explain some of the difficulty the US military and CIA now experience getting recruits.

It might also explain why people are voting for the "wrecking ball" presidency of Donald Trump. They would rather have destruction than a continuation of a system that obscures the utopian project the USA once embodied.  Having a large population praying for sabotage doesn't bode well for the American future. 

On the other hand, economic meltdown, and a military attack (Pearl Harbor) previously persuaded the oligarchs sponsoring this latest attack on the lower orders to reconsider immiserating the population in the pursuit of profit. That dislocation in the USA fortunately brought us the New Deal, and the Great Society--guardrails for what emerged as the Middle Class. Perhaps that's the destination past the inevitable suffering of the innocents that's baked in the current public policy cake. We'll see.

Update: Just spotted this headline: Sicily’s gangsters complain they can’t get the staff