ABSINRAW

National Armed Forces are one of those machineries whose smooth functioning fundamentally depends on the unequivocal alignment of all the cogs, to a degree impossible to achieve through regular means, like monetary lubricant, as the fuel is their own lives. Such alignment requires a clear, irrefutable true purpose, i.e. protecting the nation.

Hence, the belief of the cogs in this purpose is tried, tested and judged by the machinery itself, by its own standard.

However, it’s a machinery that ultimately is an instrument of the state.

The pride, respect and thankfulness for National Armed Forces from outside the machinery often gives birth to a blind reverence towards it, which renders each action taken by them as sacrosanct. This inability to separate reverence from scrutiny gives birth to proxy cogs, that do not contribute to the machinery’s function or fuel, but are enchanted by its true purpose.

The cogs function for the machinery, without having the full agency to question how it is being driven towards its purpose by the state. The cogs are bound to the machinery, hence to the state.

Proxy cogs surrender their most powerful right, the right to question the state on why the machinery is being driven the way it is. Instead they assume the role of advocating for the state-bound cogs, for they choose to believe that the ways of the cogs would always be just, ignoring that their justness can be compromised by the course set for the machinery by the state.

Ironically, proxy cogs can be decisively instrumental in supporting the machinery in attaining its true purpose by exercising their rights. Instead, they choose to cater to the optics of patriotism, pushing the cogs and the machinery deeper into the hands of the state, even if the machinery moves for state-sanctioned decimation.

So if you believe that the machinery of your country can act without/against the state, then I don’t mind waiting for Santa on Christmas this year with you.