Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

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> People are eager to fight something

Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. They'll be sitting in the tanks, on the battlefield on tiktok or something. Worse, (better?) is the ideas they pick up from the movies. Superbly advanced civilizations, with an almost [Edit: actually] unbelievable array of weapons, still hang their fate on individual superheroes. Their principal weapons are (get this) modern day swords and spears and body armour! also, the weapons are quickly abandoned in favour of punching the opponent in the face, with no apparent effect, and they don't even do that properly. If anything, violent superhero movies should be encouraged.

> Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight.

This zeitgeist is not ubiquitous. There are plenty of newly minted adults who jump into the military. Not all of them are lifers, but the government incentives are very good for the poor facing minimum wage at a McDonald's.

I suspect OP is saying that something like conscripting people to war wouldn't be popular today.

I also doubt it would be popular with helicopter parents :)

It wasn't popular during either world war for a lot of people (from what i remember from my [canadian] high school history, quebec in particular wasn't thrilled about conscription)

Thanks for your comment. In ww1 about 25,000 conscripted Canadians were sent over seas, in ww2 12,000. Many more were conscripted but didn’t leave the country. I didn’t realize Canada had conscription at all, or the divide between French and English.

That's a good point..

But my impression was that it was more tolerated.. with an attitude like: "this is my war", as if every generation has a war to fight.

At the end of the day, war is pretty different when its a plausible existential threat, instead of just going violent adventuring in some back water that had no realistic chance of ever hitting back.

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