So what is the Mushroom Treatment? "Well, that's where they keep you in the dark and feed you bullshit."
And that is "standard operating procedure" for military personnel amid their expendable "assets": dependents, personnel, postal workers, those who own and operate a business or happen to be travelling through an area of special interest to the US military. Everyone is expendable, disposable and can be made dead or worthless to a US soldier in war or occupation.
You might think, "Hey - that's a one sided deal!"
If and when the military runs the town you live in that will be the standard. There won't be a court of law to answer to or the entertainment even a minimum jail sentence. Who you are and what you do is decided on the answer of an instant, arrest, detention and/or execution. You're best bet for survival is to be outside of and to evade military jurisdiction at all costs.
Unless, of course, you want all the answers to be decided by the US armed service member camping out on your street. If they get antsy, take too much of whatever their commanding officer gave them to enhance their performance, horny or bored - well then, that's just your bad luck.
The military tends to be a social system absorbing disposable undesirables where no one is really safe. It is also a temporal refuge which makes the most sense for the unloved - for the structure and providence justified to honor the surviving. This is the principal illusion behind allowing more to be given to US DoD jurisdiction.
My situation was not that different. My father was the military jurisdiction in our household. There were absolutist orders to a point. I would conform with obedience if I did not want to suffer quarantine or impact of punitive force. I got bratty, like all kids and on occasion I did step out of line. There were better times.
However, the atmosphere of delusional arbitrary controls continued to slip into the realm of no return after my father re-married. She could keep his secrets. She found my father's descent into alcoholic routine a workable living standard. By her account, there was nothing she could do about it.
I was routinely verbally and physically assaulted by 250 lb woman with borderline personality disorder and a heavy prescription drug problem. By my father's account, there was nothing he could do about it.
At one point during my adolescence, a fast soon became a hunger strike with no memorandum. Without an end to the moral deprivation - it became anorexia. There was nothing they could do about it. And it eventually led to the end of an untenable living situation where I was denied basic human rights.
I was told to shut up and to not tell anyone what was happening. I was told there was no one to rescue me. I was told it was my fault. My financial attempts to escape were sabotaged. However, I eventually ended a situation where guns were randomly pointed at my face by the people I relied on for survival by speaking out and trusting that someone good would hear me.
My ability to write this over 20 years later is proof that post militarized life is survivable. However, at its worst- in the midst of it - it was dangerous and I could have died.
Sustained secrecy, intimidation and abuse is consistent with unwritten values espoused by the United States military. Soldiers are a utility for times of war not to uphold the rights of human life with any type of reason. You are a civillian until you become collateral damage. If that happens, oh well, God will sort it out.
At one point, during this time period there was the emergence of an option to go live with my completely and clandestinely estranged mother. Since so many details were hidden from me, I chose to stay with my father. He continued to initiate me into the details of a lifestyle; which was essentially an unprotected one. Two things became entirely clear to me: I had no defender amid imminent threat of danger and my life was in the ordered control of an uncaring military force in a country where I had no right of citizenship. Wherever I turned there was the butt end of someone's gun to contend with.
A lot of normal teenage life ensued- crushes, homework, sports, skateboarding and personal discoveries continued despite the weird attempts to arrest my development.
As one could guess this situation was not dissimilar at all to what our lives will and may become in the entertainment of the National Defense Authorization Act. The smallest acts of insubordination will be met with excessive force.
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