Chris Hedges, Peter Jackson’s Cartoon War
Exactly what I feared this film would be, technical achievement and all, because to decry war is tantamount to bashing those who fought it.
[UPDATE: Several commenters on this article independently claim that Hedges missed the point, and that the film is actually quite antiwar. So, provisionally set aside this data point for now: generally speaking, Hedges is spot on.]
How convenient--and how deeply cynical to claim that anything but support for the war that victimized mostly working-class soldiers (to say nothing of Their victims, which rarely count) is revictimized those victimized by the pointless war in the first place. And they're pretty much all pointless, with a very few reasonable exceptions.
And it works nearly every fucking time in the United States of Idiocy--and everywhere else, too.
Admit it: if it meant killing a lot of brown people, we'd've long ago decarbonized. We're happy to do that for killing's sake, and we'll buy any yellow-cake bullshit just as long as we can get our never-admitted jollies watching big pretty Boom-Booms on CNN which, after all, are only killing the ragheads. They're not, like, people--more like gladiators. Slaves. To be killed for our pleasure and national pride, and to keep us from figuring out who really sucks in a serious, species-threatening way: our own ruling class.
Yes, this means I love Saddam and support all his crimes. Of course! This is the United States of Idiocy! I should Support the Troops(TM) by loving every war, and war itself, so that more poor kids can kill, die, or have their lives ruined because some old rich fuck has a geopolitical theory to prove, or a commercial sector to support. To do otherwise would harm the cannon fodder we love so dearly we don't allow them college without crazy debt, healthcare, etc.
You follow that, right?
Oh, yeah: the article.
[UPDATE: Several commenters on this article independently claim that Hedges missed the point, and that the film is actually quite antiwar. So, provisionally set aside this data point for now: generally speaking, Hedges is spot on.]
How convenient--and how deeply cynical to claim that anything but support for the war that victimized mostly working-class soldiers (to say nothing of Their victims, which rarely count) is revictimized those victimized by the pointless war in the first place. And they're pretty much all pointless, with a very few reasonable exceptions.
And it works nearly every fucking time in the United States of Idiocy--and everywhere else, too.
Admit it: if it meant killing a lot of brown people, we'd've long ago decarbonized. We're happy to do that for killing's sake, and we'll buy any yellow-cake bullshit just as long as we can get our never-admitted jollies watching big pretty Boom-Booms on CNN which, after all, are only killing the ragheads. They're not, like, people--more like gladiators. Slaves. To be killed for our pleasure and national pride, and to keep us from figuring out who really sucks in a serious, species-threatening way: our own ruling class.
Yes, this means I love Saddam and support all his crimes. Of course! This is the United States of Idiocy! I should Support the Troops(TM) by loving every war, and war itself, so that more poor kids can kill, die, or have their lives ruined because some old rich fuck has a geopolitical theory to prove, or a commercial sector to support. To do otherwise would harm the cannon fodder we love so dearly we don't allow them college without crazy debt, healthcare, etc.
You follow that, right?
Oh, yeah: the article.