Most recent public comments by Brian Finlay https://nowcomment.com/users/17135 https://nowcomment.com/documents/36342?scroll_to=407043 https://nowcomment.com/documents/36342?scroll_to=407043 The American military-industrial complex that dominates US culture drives this country forward whether we like it or not. Here, Nguyen questions whether the American populace can even begin to grasp just how pervasive it truly is. As Nguyen goes on to explain in the subsequent passage, the most simplistic of everyday actions and aspects of US consumerism are still cogs in the grinding wheels of the "war machine" Each and every US citizen, regardless of their beliefs of war, regardless of their perspectives or experiences still ultimately contribute to the "dull hum" that Nguyen describes. Is it then up to us to individually stop our gears from turning, or is it only the total simultaneous destruction of every cog in the machine that will bring down the military-industrial complex? Another question Nguyen pokes at here is whether or not the ignorance of the average American is a choice. The "passive consent" he describes strikes at the heart of it. The "consent" points towards a conscious decision to be ignorant of the far-reaching consequences of their everyday actions and their part in the perpetuation of war in the US. While it's obvious most individuals do not actually decide to be active contributors to the clunking, destructive hegemony of US society, it is in the vast majority's apathetic tendencies that their ignorance stems. The "passive consent" then derives from this apathy, rather than the surface ignorance. So in a way, the US citizen is in fact faced with the choice of ignorance. However, it is not their decision to be oblivious but instead their decision to not care enough in the first place that concretes their "choice" before they are really even offered it. Mon, 09 Nov 2015 22:57:05 -0500