The ancient Greek word for "shield" is "hopla".

Its the root of the term "hoplite", or heavy infantry, the armored pikeman who fought in the phalanx. "Hopla" was also a catch-all term for armor, or any military equipment. I believe the English word "hoopla" (for frivolous paraphernalia) can trace its etymology to that source.

Little boys love their hoopla, they love to march around in formation, flags fluttering, saluting, with grimly determined manly scowls on their beardless faces. Its real lizard brain shit, and its not surprising fascism (the lymbic system projected onto entire populations) loves this sort of thing, and uses it to mobilize their little boys for collective suicide.

Women don't fall for this. They know that even though sometimes it may be necessary to fight, war is primarily a mechanism to steal their sons and have them butchered in some foreign place, and that by the time the next generation is old enough to fight, the reasons for the last war are usually forgotten.

When I was a kid, I wanted to join the Boy Scouts. My mother absolutely forbid it. "I'll not have my son strutting around in a cute little uniform, waving flags and saluting, like some Hitler Youth." You see, after growing up in the Great Depression, her young husband and her kid brother had both gone to war, and were gone for the duration in remote parts of the world, while she did her best to try and survive on her own in the home front. I was born shortly after father came back, and soon she was widowed and had to raise me alone.

I was very disappointed at the time. I really wanted to play soldier. Now that I'm older, and perhaps wiser, I see her point of view quite clearly. Wars and depressions aren't things you do. They are things that are done TO you.

No, I'm not a pacifist. And yes, I know sometimes you have to fight, or at least, be ready to do so. Maybe that's why evolution has wired little boys to be like we are. But we should never be taught to look forward to it, or glorify it. And we should not indoctrinate our kids to be that way.