Wednesday, April 28, 2010
"Remember, His Guts are Hanging Out!"
"Pushing the Limits" from the April 17, 2010 C-J is the latest example of war-glorifying propoganda courtesy America's free press. This piece gives an insider view of the hardcore military training at Fort Knox, KY where soldiers go three days operating under a simulated Al-Qaeda attack. The soldiers go with little sleep and food: "the pain and agony helps you prepare," says one of the seargents. Here is a perfect example of how the post-human future of America in which people are engineered into robots: things that exist only to work and have no feelings except pain, which is exactly how robots are described in Carl Kapek's 1920 play Rossums Universal Robots. The military-industrial complex is an ideology obsessed with never-ending war and institutionally engineered misery. The quote above from the seargent betrays the agenda of never-ending war. Remember Einstein: "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." The seargent's very use of the word "prepare" shows the military is not there to prevent or deter conflict but to perpetuate it. The fact the C-J and NY Times consistently glorify war (see earlier post about Valentine's Day pro-war propoganda)demonstrates mainstream America's tireless bloodlust despite the carnage of the Bush-Cheney butchery from the previous decade. The seargent's command to "remember, his guts are hanging out" shouted to soldiers simulating carrying a wounded fellow soldier out of harm's way is further support for my idea that mainstream Americans are necrophiles, obsessed with the human body as corpse or mutilated specimen. Familes and children can read this morbid fantasy, but we're not going to encourage masturbation in sex education classes in middle school--that might encourage people to watch porn, and interfere with the preparation for more war.
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I would argue that your rhetorical analysis of the individual seargent in question is a red-herring. Of course the actual members of the army are "preparing" for conflict. That is their sole purpose. Winston Churchill loved war, as did the West Pointers from across the pond (McArthur, Patton, et al.). The real evidence of America's, to take Orwell's term, love of "continual warfare" is the fact that we have a standing army. Imagine the armed forces of the U.S.A. being harnessed as a force to improve agriculture, trade, and transportation instead of warfare. It has been said by scholars and military experts that the age of conventional warfare has passed. No longer do we need mechanized armored divisions and massive infantries. Instead we need special forces who can engage terrorists, a strong naval force to protect our shores, and a state of the art air force to control and protect our airspace. We have all of these things. The real war now is to redirect our vast resources to production, and to allow our technology and expertise to provide the power necessary to survive in a dangerous world. Sadly, Americans watch shows (in droves) that center on crime scene investigations. We, as you argue, love the corpse and not the life. But no one really cares, so let's just go to the beach.
ReplyDeleteThose are awesome comments on many levels. The loving of war, even by historical figures after whom I was named, is the major repellent feature of Western culture that has contextualized this love within a heroic narrative about preserving their "good" nation against the "evils" out there in the world. You are right to say the "sole purpose" of militaries is to fight wars which means to turn people into corpses. Yet in America the standing Army remains because it still persuasively portrays itself as "heroic" (see my earlier blog on "Valentine's Day Pro-Military Propoganda below). In the meantime, let's go to the beach and live and have fun--despite how unpopular that will be with our fellow countrymen.
ReplyDeleteLet me also add that Red Herring or not my reference to Einstein is to point out that he is right and the fact America is "preparing" for war means it has no interest in preventing it which affirms the idea America is a war-mongering nation and culture (or anti-culture). As for the question of "who cares?" obviously I do and I am not going to symapthize with or concede to apathetic Americans who are role playing the corpse.
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