During the Global War on Terror, when the United States was engaged battling terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left routinely lied to young voters that President George W. Bush in particular, and Republicans in general, were going to reinstitute the draft and send them to these active military theaters. The Left’s message was less than subtle: vote for Democrats or else the GOP will make sure you’re drafted and/or dead.
I was reminded of this in the heat of the 2020 election, when one of the Democrats’ smears was that an unstable President Trump was going to involve us in a war—likely a nuclear one. As during the Bush Administration, the scurrilous charge targeted young voters. What was different was that Trump was far less interventionist, and utilized American military power with significantly less frequency than did his predecessors. If one understands the Left’s tactics, Trump’s disinclination to use military power was not only insufficient to stop their “he’ll get us in a war” lie; it was, in fact, their reason for spreading it. (To those who contest this assessment of the Left’s tactics, does “Russiagate” ring a bell?)
Heading into the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats and their media cohorts are now using the prospect of nuclear war to try and prop up Joe Biden’s sagging poll numbers, which threaten to drag his party’s federal and state candidates down to defeat. To wit, Biden opined to a gaggle of fat cat Democrats:
[For the] first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of a] nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going. We’ve got a guy [Putin] I know fairly well. He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.
Yes, if the Democrats’ stoking of “civil war” rhetoric isn’t enough to get their voters to the polls for the 2022 midterm elections, why not toss in the prospect of nuclear annihilation—along a path they and their minions have helped cement—even as they taunt the enemy to try to look like a tough guy?
What could possibly go wrong?
Nonetheless, after Biden raised the prospect of nuclear Armageddon, it should come as no surprise the Democrats have been mum about his administration reinstituting the draft. Well, in fairness, the Democrats have tried to require young women to register for the selective service; and, in the interim, the administration has averred that anyone born male at birth must register for the draft. Some observers might say these are signals the Biden Administration is taking the initial preparatory measures to reinstitute the draft. But the Left assures us these draft policies are for “progress” and “equity,” or something. Thus far, such threadbare assurances have sufficed to lead young voters, if not exactly to embrace these measures, then at least to consider them benign.
Such an about-face in messaging is a difficult balancing act, but for Democrats it is a well-trod tightrope. This is not the first time the Democrats have raised the specter of nuclear Armageddon to shamelessly try to pass off their failed policies. Their most notable, injurious, and perverse claim was that unless we trusted the world’s greatest state sponsor of terror—Iran—to use nuclear power (soley for domestic energy purposes, you understand) they would get ahold of nuclear weapons and Armageddon would ensue. This risible argument was advanced to conceal the fact Iran has persistently tried to expand its military’s use of nuclear and missile technology, and has no intention of stopping. Tehran’s terrorist regime wants sanctions relief and nuclear weapons. The Iran nuke deal would be a suicide pact for the West, as it only delays the day of Iran becoming a nuclear power that can export terror—and potentially far worse horrors—safe under their nuclear armed umbrella.
In the instance of the Iran pact, as with Biden’s latest claim, the Democrats are relying on the indoctrinated to recall the trope that Republicans are warmongers; and, conversely, that the Democrats will spare young voters from the draft and/or military service during a war. The Democrats are also relying upon their decades-long effort to inculcate people—and youth, in particular—with the dread of the climate apocalypse.
This paranoid dread of the climate apocalypse is an attempt by the Left to exchange the concrete threat of nuclear war that the Right had defused (if only momentarily by defeating the Soviet Union in the first Cold War) for a manufactured fear that the world was going to end in fire and/or ice, depending on Goddess Gaia’s mood in the moment.
Today’s young voters have largely been spared the pervasive, persistent threat of nuclear war faced by other generations. Thus, where previous generations of young voters engaged in anti-war and “No Nukes” organizations and campaigns, this generation’s youthful energy is channeled into the climate change hoax movement. This is not to say young voters are blasé about the environmental damage caused by a nuclear explosion. Nevertheless, even though science doesn’t support the more extreme claims of climate alarmism which, ergo, means the danger and damages of nuclear war (even if it’s only tactical nuclear weapons) is a graver threat—for young voters a nuclear exchange remains a subordinate fear in relation to the climate apocalypse.
Further, given their priorities regarding humanity’s impending doom, young voters are disproportionately eager and willing to follow the governmental dictates and jettison their liberty, prosperity, and pursuit of happiness to “defeat” climate change (even though no one has defined what the ultimate victory will look like). How different is that from being drafted into the military?
It is significant. For, when it comes to losing their rights to defend the United States against her enemies, many young voters don’t want to be drafted; but when it comes to “preventing” the climate apocalypse, many young voters have already volunteered.
It’s you they intend to draft.
To paraphrase the 1917 song by Tell Taylor and Ole Olsen, “We’re in the Army Now”:
From the looks of things, we’ve got to join the climate army.
Uncle Sammy means to do just what he says.
It won’t be long before we’re lighting candles,
A-fighting against that mean old climate change,
So, though nothing can wrong,
Still we sing this little song:
We’re in the climate army now.
We’re stuck behind a plow.
We’ll never get, you son-of-a-b—h.
We’re in the climate army now.
We’re in the climate army now.
Suppose you wonder how?
But don’t you fear. You’ll soon be here.
We’re in the climate army now.