What is it good for? The History Channel!

Now that I have a real job (planning and constructing those paper clips you people oh-so-casually twist and destroy), I can wave goodbye to the passing thought that maybe, just maybe, I should join the Army. In reality, this was never a possibility. I would've joined the Navy, following in my dad's, and, more importantly, Commander Adama's footsteps. Sure, I'm a pacifist. Sure, I'm non-nationalistic. Sure... Have you seen those starting bonuses?! I could buy like a hundred XBox 360s to store in the basement whilst I endure a nebulous struggle for freedom halfway around the world. That, my friends, is worth fighting for.


Or maybe it isn't? Despite pop culture's efforts to educate me on the realities of war, I feel like my learning has been inadequate. Is this possible? Could it be true that when Zach Morris froze time to remind me about the values of patriotism, I didn't really learn anything? Did April O'Neill's shocking exposé on the crimes of the Foot somehow fail to inform me of real world issues? Shell-shocked, I searched for answers these past two weeks in the most comfortable of places: Sylvester Stallone's "graying" hair (it's still as dark as his silhouette), and polygonal guns.

Rambo, in his fourth documentary feature, has finally coined a phrase as memorable as his archery skills: "Live for nothing. Die for something." I'm not exactly sure how to interpret this, given the (spoiler alert?) fact that the spokesman himself never dies. Still, maybe he's onto something. Maybe I don't know how to interpret this because the greatest fear I've ever known is Y3K (that's not a typo; it's coming.) Many Burmese dissidents have seriously adopted this catchy axiom to their struggle. After the inevitable, ironic chuckle, this gots to make ya think: What are they onto? What do they know about living for nothing?

Even the most gritty of cinema (Saving Private Ryan, for a popular example) rarely inspires more than a metaconversation on the tragedies of war. Yes, men figured this out centuries ago, when women were dying early and leaving babies - War is bad. It keeps on trucking, though, in a form that I don't think anyone reading this understands. War costs us soldiers. War costs us money. War costs us hours of Wolf Blitzer airtime television can never get back. But what else does it cost us people who have the whim to sit back and read a stupid (aka great, smart, and deserving of money) pop culture blog? The answer is obvious.

The obvious response here is, "Hey! My brother/friend/frog died in Iraq. I've lost a lot." I know. I'm sorry. I thought your frog died years ago. I am a coward and don't trust myself to fight even when the Human Versus Wholly Evil Alien war does arrive. People who join the armed forces feel a calling I respect, in various ways. Half-Life 2 taught me to respect them for surviving more than five minutes without finding a health pack in that crate over there. Call of Duty 4 taught me to respect them for surviving long enough to refill their bloodshot eyes with the elixir of life. Every sequel of every first-person-shooter taught me that even though it takes six or seven well-targeted shots to die, dying is a very real possibility. I don't want to restart from the checkpoint, nor do I want our soldiers to have to do that. Still, we in America have little idea what it's like to live for nothing. Even our uniformed men and women, who are consistently put in the line of fire, realize that they are fighting for the strongest military on Earth. They are fighting for a very tangible victory; for the right to go home and steal one of those 360s I had hidden away. There is honor amongst thieves, and that honor is the Purple Heart they left behind as evidence.


To reemphasize, I am not discounting the experiences of people who have endured and suffered the images of battle. What I am discounting is the images of battle I've experienced. I love Call of Duty 4. I, for whatever reason, enjoyed Rambo. I should not take these or any other war media as lessons in life. I should take them as lessons in something, but not that something worth dying for. The will to die is nothing I understand, nor is it anything I hope to understand, nor is it anything I wish could be understood by anyone.

Even if we are living for nothing, we're living for something, and that's gotta be worth, well, something.

This entry was posted by DoktorPeace, on Tuesday, February 12, 2008. You can leave your response.