The Vikes finally win, albeit against a bunch of homeless people. See what happens when you stop playing pocket pool and start playing football, fellas?
***
Q. What do a bowl of Grape Nuts, a green Sharpie and Jesus Christ have in common?
A. Fuck if I know. That's why I gave up trying to write jokes.
***
I watched the LOTR trilogy over the weekend. One of the things that struck me about it was the recurring, I don't know if you'd call it a theme, but the motif of an honourable or glorious death, or at least a death that helped achieve some greater good. You had all these people dying in hopeless battles defending garrisons and charging orcs and whatnot, but they were defending something. They had a chance, if not for an accomplished or illustrious life, then at least for a death that meant something more than just being put in the ground and eaten by worms. If all you had was a crappy mediocre life, you could at least sacrifice it to buy life or freedom or something worthwhile for somebody else. If you couldn't make a satisfactory impact in life, you could at least do it in death. And I'm not just talking about imaginary people fighting orcs--I'm talking about so many of the wars throughout history in which people defended their land against invaders, or left their homes to meet an enemy which was on its way to conquer them, or what have you.
Whereas what we're looking at here--you know what I'm talking about, it starts with an I and it ain't ice cream--where is it? Where's the fucking nobility? Everybody knows the war is retarded. These are good people who signed up to fight and die for their country, but do they deserve to die for something stupid? Is that a good use of a soldier's life? Anybody's life? Anybody's death? Shit, if the day ever came when I wanted to die for something noble, I couldn't do it, because there's nothing noble left to die for. I couldn't even sign up for the army or stow away on a ship or something, because why would I? So I could die for Bush and his stupid fucking personal glory trip? What else is there? What is there to die for in which the dying will actually accomplish something, where your staying put til the end actually made a difference? If this war was actually accomplishing something--if we were fighting another Hitler instead of a bunch of disbanded, disaffected assclowns with stolen munitions--that'd be worthwhile. Do you see that happening? Do you see any of this "defending America's freedom" shit happening? Defending it from what? A rinkydink dictator and his crappy little army that could, basically, stand there in Iraq and shoot in our general direction and not much else? Oooooooooooh. Gobs of honour there. Just scads.
The only honour that I can find in it is in the people who took their oath and have gone there to honour that oath, whether they agree with it or not, because of their sense of duty; and in the people whose sense of duty to humanity is even greater than their sense of duty to their profession, and who defected as a protest against the wrongness of the policy. I know those two things contradict, but in a way maybe they don't; in a way they're sort of mirror images of each other. Military duty and humanitarian duty should go hand in hand; it's the only defensible justification for an army. That's not happening here, and I can just as easily understand somebody feeling a duty not to fight an unjust war as I can understand someone's loyalty to the organization to which they pledged themselves.
What pisses me off is that even if you wanted some honour, there isn't any. The society, or the media, or whoever you want to blame, has done such a thorough job of shitting all over everybody's and everything's good name that nothing's fucking honourable anymore.
Now I'm going to sit back and wait for the angry e-mails from Iraq veterans who are doubtless going to tell me that I don't know dick shit about honour and duty and blah blah blah. Well, maybe I don't. Or maybe I just have a different idea about it. And of course, because my idea is different, it's automatically wrong. That's just a given.
***
And I'm very tired, and should have spent this time paying bills and making phone calls instead of babbling incoherently. Not that it matters; there's road excavation going on nearby, and it's difficult to concentrate on anything when your apartment is shaking.
I'm getting very tired of feeling like I live in an earthquake zone.
same bitch time, same bitch channel...
Posted by Frida Peeple at September 27, 2005 08:46 AM