news – Esoteric Epistemology

If there’s no draft, why register people automatically?

solidersin camo marching, photographed from the neck down — Photo by Filip Andrejevic

Starting in December in the US, eligible men ages eighteen to twenty-five will be automatically registered for the draft via a new automatic draft registration system. This move is part of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

While automatically registering these men is not the same as actually drafting them, them having all their names placed on a list that is for no other purpose than military service thoroughly creeps me out.

Would Trump bring back the draft?

When asked in 2024 about bringing back the draft, President Trump called it “a ridiculous idea.”

Now it seems that the White House has changed their tune, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt stating in March that Trump “does not remove options off of the table,” but also that a draft is “not part of the plan right now.”

I mean, if you’re not going to have a draft, why bother shifting the responsibility of registering for it from individual people to a computer? I’m skeptical that a president who has already involved us in multiple foreign wars wouldn’t at least consider making the draft “part of the plan.”

Is the automatic registration a good idea?

At least automatic registration might help young men avoid penalties for failing to register, like large fines or, in the case of immigrants, a loss of citizenship.

But if a young man has to register for the draft himself, he has some knowledge that it’s happening. Having people auto-registered within 30 days of their eighteenth birthday seems like a way of slyly getting people to agree to military service without really having any concept of what military service is or how it would affect ones’ life.

Serving in the military is a serious thing! If young people are automatically going to be signed up, maybe they should at least get some education about what it would mean to actually serve.

We can object

I was taught from a young age by my Mom to repeat the phrase “conscientious objector,” in case a draft were ever established for women. That’s what I’ll say if it ever happens to me, but I wonder how many of these young men who are being auto-registered for a draft that ostensibly doesn’t exist yet will be educated about having the option to say “no” to going to war?

Military service in the US has been voluntary since 1973, and I certainly hope that it stays that way. If the draft is ever brought back, I anticipate that a lot of people will protest.

The number of people registered as conscientious objectors has already increased since Operation Epic Fury began in Iran.

“They’re scared of the long-term moral consequences of their actions in this moment right now,” said Iraq war veteran Mike Prysner, of soldiers who don’t want to return to combat. Prysner claimed to have talked to dozens of soldiers who submitted conscientious objector claims, some of them doing so with just hours to go before their deployment.

In order to be a conscientious objector, you must have a consistent moral objection to war in general, not just specific wars, and you must be able to provide a written statement about how you arrived at your beliefs. If you’re a young man and that sounds like you, you might want to take the time to register.

You never know what’s going to happen in the future. If you’re opposed to war, make sure your name is on the right list.

Why Can’t We Stop?

If you wander about Oregon Country Fair enough you’ll find the free library!

As a child, I found this book there: Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism.

When I was a kid, I read this comic book about the military-industrial complex over and over again, and it really impacted me. Now when I read about conflicts like Russia and Ukraine or Israel and Palestine, I ask myself questions like: “who is going to profit from this?” and “what innocent people are going to suffer?”

For many years, the US government has painted itself as a sort of “world cop,” interfering in global conflicts in what it claims to be the best interest of the countries it invades. In reality, this image couldn’t be further from the truth of what’s really going on.

The truth is that it’s the same story over and over again. We recruit and train the very same terrorist forces that then attack us, and then we use their attacks to justify further violence. We sell weapons to the fabricated governments that we install to serve our interests. We arm both sides of conflicts, and then our construction companies rebuild the cities that are flattened by the same bombs and drones that we manufacture.

We design some of the best medical treatments in the world and then withhold them from the women and and children whose hospitals and schools we flatten with our explosives, and to our own soldiers who come home maimed and betrayed by the country that they swore to defend.

Like George Orwell said: “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” The war doesn’t exist to defend freedom or fight evil, it exists to generate profits and to keep the vast majority of the planet on its knees in abject terror before a select few.

We use the oppression of women to justify invading the middle east, and then oppress women at home under a similar guise of empowering them. Women in Afghanistan are “liberated” by sanctions that are starving their children to death before their eyes the same way women at here in the US are “liberated” by having their livelihoods taken away when they fight back against male violence.

We complain about the lack of civil liberties in countries like Russia and China, and then we imprison or banish political dissidents at home, while bombarding our own populace with endless propaganda that is designed to stoke civil unrest and blind hatred between human beings.

The United States is like the abusive parent who uses the threat of a foreign boogeyman to frighten its children into blind obedience in the household. Our government says to us: “how dare you complain about how I treat you? Would you rather I let the boogeyman get you?”

These boogeymen are nothing more than old worn puppets, sewn hastily together for purposes of drumming up fear and coercing compliance.

It turns my stomach knowing that any portion of the money I’ve paid in taxes throughout my life has gone towards murdering and crippling innocent people, but I can’t deny that it’s the case. I’m complicit because I’m afraid, and so are you.

When I read about the atrocities committed by terrorist groups I do not see monsters and boogeymen. I see the faces of the women who kill their own children because they are abused by their spouses and the mentally ill who are shot by the police because they were abandoned time and time again by a broken system and became so ill that no one around them could see their humanity any longer.

I see human beings. Human beings who were children once and who have hopes and dreams and families just like you and me.

Kamikaze soldiers and militant dictators are not less human than you. They are very sick human beings whose personal and collective pain has exceeded their ability to cope with it in a sane way.

In the United States, so many of us are so sheltered and so far removed from real violence that we have forgotten why it exists in the first place. Wherever there are people in pain, there will be people waiting to exploit that pain for their own nefarious purposes.

Don’t be a pawn in their barbarous chess game. Think for yourself. Choose the path of peace.

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The New Automatic Draft Registration is Creepy