A while back I read an article (which I'm kicking myself for not bookmarking!) postulating that the people of Great Britain were so psychologically traumatized, individually and collectively, by waste and horror and pointlessness of the First World War, that society collectively imposed a meaningful narrative upon it. They just couldn't cope with the idea that all this waste had been for nothing, so over the "Never Again" message intended by the creators of Remembrance Day, they superimposed glamorous sepia-toned Dashing Young Heroes, Fighting For Our Freedom.
That explains so much!
But, while I do thoroughly empathize with the need to control your narrative to get through the day, it's getting to be time to retire that narrative. The last surviving WWI veteran died in 2012, at the age of 110. If there are any WWI survivors left in the world, they're pushing the century mark and, because they were so young at the time, may not even remember the war. We're either approaching or have already passed the point where there's no one left whose psychological trauma needs to be attended to with this more-meaningful narrative.
The 100th anniversary of the end of WWI is coming up in a few short years. Think pieces will be written. All we have to do is not include the sepia-toned heroism in the think pieces. Talk instead about waste and tragedy. Talk about how it didn't even need to be a war, even by the standards by which things sometimes need to be a war. Talk about how the ignorance of eager young recruits and the short-sightedness of governments led them to charge in, expecting a Jolly Good Adventure, with no idea what they were getting into. Talk about how this all destroyed individuals and families and communities and societies and physically broke Europe and created the conditions that gave rise to nazism. Maybe even talk some more about how people at the time had to impose a narrative of meaning and purpose to cope with their psychological trauma.
The unfortunate side effect of this imposition of a narrative of meaning on WWI has been that the waste, horror and pointlessness are not as much at the forefront of subsequent generations' minds as they should be. This creates a situation where subsequent generations are just as ignorant as the WWI-era recruits and governments who charged in expecting a Jolly Good Adventure and ended up in hell. And this ignorance may well affect decisions about whether to get involved in future warfare - thinking that WWI had purpose affects our mental ratio of "purpose vs. pointlessness of war", so we might be more likely to see purpose (or assume there must be purpose even though we can't see it) in a potential future war.
By restoring a more accurate narrative of pointlessness and waste, we'll reduce the chance of making the same mistakes in the future, which is the best way to honour all those who were killed or destroyed in or by the First World War.
Showing posts with label pacifism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pacifism. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Sunday, November 14, 2010
What's missing from Remembrance Day
Last week, I saw a young vet selling poppies. He was definitely under 40, might even have been younger than me. (I can't tell age well in men, his head was shaved, and he was wearing the blue jacketed vet uniform that I'm used to seeing on elderly men.)
What is missing from Remembrance Day is acknowledgment that this is not okay!
I'm certain the people who first created Remembrance Day would be devastated that, nearly 100 years later, a young man - possibly a great-grandson of a WWI vet - is a war veteran!
This is not nothing. We shouldn't be scanning over without noticing it. We need to be acknowledging, at the very very least, that this is suboptimal.
Media coverage of Remembrance Day often mentions, with a tinge of sadness, that WWI and WWII veterans are dying out. I don't think that tinge of sadness is appropriate. Not that I want all my elders to die, but rather that if all the living veterans eventually die out, it will mean that we've succeeded in creating the peace and freedom that they all thought they were fighting for. If we're making more veterans, then we have failed and their sacrifices were in vain.
What is missing from Remembrance Day is acknowledgment that this is not okay!
I'm certain the people who first created Remembrance Day would be devastated that, nearly 100 years later, a young man - possibly a great-grandson of a WWI vet - is a war veteran!
This is not nothing. We shouldn't be scanning over without noticing it. We need to be acknowledging, at the very very least, that this is suboptimal.
Media coverage of Remembrance Day often mentions, with a tinge of sadness, that WWI and WWII veterans are dying out. I don't think that tinge of sadness is appropriate. Not that I want all my elders to die, but rather that if all the living veterans eventually die out, it will mean that we've succeeded in creating the peace and freedom that they all thought they were fighting for. If we're making more veterans, then we have failed and their sacrifices were in vain.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Things They Should Invent: prominently indicate on monuments the year they were built
Disclaimer for this post: I saw something, I had an emotional reaction to it, and that ultimately led to an invention that I'm blogging. I don't have enough knowledge to know if my emotional reaction was founded or not and haven't done the research, but my point for this post is to explain the reasoning for the invention.
Walking down University Avenue, I noticed that the great big war memorial thing has old-fashioned colonial names for places in Africa on it. I thought it was a generic cenotaph - never really gave this much critical thought - but it turns out it's a Boer War memorial.
That makes me vaguely uncomfortable. From what little I remember from history class, my impression of the Boer War is that it was hella colonialist, with a goal of claiming or keeping parts of Africa for Britain. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of a massive epic monument to warmongering in the name of colonialism and the glory of the empire displayed so prominently in my city, especially since my Toronto welcomes newcomers from all over the world, including the parts of Africa memorialized here by being carved in stone under their colonial names.
But, at the same time, it wouldn't do at all to take the monument down or edit it. It is a memorial to actual specific dead people who still have living descendants. It's also a well-executed piece of public art, and a historical artifact from the Victorian period. All of these are perfectly valid reasons for letting a monument stay where it is.
I understand why this heroic colonialist sentiment was expressed at the turn of the 20th century, and I'd have no qualms about the monument if it was clear "This is what people thought in the early 1900s." It's actually important to know what and how they thought of colonial wars back then. But my concern is that it seems, to my eye at least, to be saying that we still think the sentiment is unwaveringly relevant and appropriate. If only there was some way to put an asterisk on monuments saying "The ideas expressed here are those of their era and do not necessarily reflect the society of today."
So here's the solution: Every time they put up a monument, they include a readily visible cornerstone or plaque clearly indicating the year when it was commissioned or erected. It would work like the cornerstone on a building. You know how if you go past an old building you sometimes think "Hey, an interestingly old building!" and look for a cornerstone to see how old it is, but if you live or work in the old building it's just your home or your office and its age isn't especially relevant? The monument would work the same way. If it's still relevant and pertinent to observers and therefore fulfilling its original intended function, no one will pay any particular attention to the cornerstone. But if time passes and the monument becomes less relevant, the cornerstone will mark it as from the past, and anyone wondering "WTF, Rhodesia?" will see that it's over 100 years old and interpret it as a historical document.
Walking down University Avenue, I noticed that the great big war memorial thing has old-fashioned colonial names for places in Africa on it. I thought it was a generic cenotaph - never really gave this much critical thought - but it turns out it's a Boer War memorial.
That makes me vaguely uncomfortable. From what little I remember from history class, my impression of the Boer War is that it was hella colonialist, with a goal of claiming or keeping parts of Africa for Britain. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of a massive epic monument to warmongering in the name of colonialism and the glory of the empire displayed so prominently in my city, especially since my Toronto welcomes newcomers from all over the world, including the parts of Africa memorialized here by being carved in stone under their colonial names.
But, at the same time, it wouldn't do at all to take the monument down or edit it. It is a memorial to actual specific dead people who still have living descendants. It's also a well-executed piece of public art, and a historical artifact from the Victorian period. All of these are perfectly valid reasons for letting a monument stay where it is.
I understand why this heroic colonialist sentiment was expressed at the turn of the 20th century, and I'd have no qualms about the monument if it was clear "This is what people thought in the early 1900s." It's actually important to know what and how they thought of colonial wars back then. But my concern is that it seems, to my eye at least, to be saying that we still think the sentiment is unwaveringly relevant and appropriate. If only there was some way to put an asterisk on monuments saying "The ideas expressed here are those of their era and do not necessarily reflect the society of today."
So here's the solution: Every time they put up a monument, they include a readily visible cornerstone or plaque clearly indicating the year when it was commissioned or erected. It would work like the cornerstone on a building. You know how if you go past an old building you sometimes think "Hey, an interestingly old building!" and look for a cornerstone to see how old it is, but if you live or work in the old building it's just your home or your office and its age isn't especially relevant? The monument would work the same way. If it's still relevant and pertinent to observers and therefore fulfilling its original intended function, no one will pay any particular attention to the cornerstone. But if time passes and the monument becomes less relevant, the cornerstone will mark it as from the past, and anyone wondering "WTF, Rhodesia?" will see that it's over 100 years old and interpret it as a historical document.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Remembrance Day blogathon
One thing I've always hated about life is that if you don't go around gloating about what you're doing, people assume you're ignorant.
When I was in Montessori school, I wanted to play with these beads, but the teacher wouldn't let me because she said you had to be able to count to 10 to play with them. I could totally count to 10 - I could count to 100! But back then, at the age of 3 or 4, I didn't realize that she wanted me to show her I could count to 10, and just slunk off sad and confused.
When I was in Grade 2, I got really frustrated with how slowly my classmates read aloud. So rather than wait for them to struggle through a sentence, I'd read ahead and see how the story ended, then go onto the next story in the reader. By the time it was my turn to read, I was three stories ahead and had no idea where we were. So when it came time to put us into reading groups, my teacher put me into the blue group, which was the second-lowest. I was confused and rather humiliated, as I felt like I could read fluently. Eventually my parents intervened and I was bumped up to the green reading group, which was the highest, but not until after they'd all finished learning how to do cat's cradles.
When I was in Grade 7, a girl at my school was diagnosed with cancer, and some of her friends started raising money so she could buy a wig. I gave a significant amount of money to this fund - something like $5 or $10 when my weekly allowance at the time was $2 or $3. Then I came home from school and my father said he was writing his yearly cheque to the United Way, and asked if I'd like to add a donation. I said no thank you. So I got a lecture on why you have to be charitable. I really resented being treated that way just because I preferred to do the right thing quietly and humbly without gloating (I was still Catholic at the time and this was a virtue - c.f. Luke 18: 9-14 the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector) rather than giving money to an organization that seemed to spend an awful lot of money on giving its donors public bragging rights. (Which, incidentally, is the reason why my father has since stopped donating to the United Way.) That grated so much that since then I have only ever made anonymous charitable donations.
I got to thinking of all this because tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day is one of those things where people assume I'm ignorant when I don't go around holding forth at length about what's inside my head. It all started when I was in high school and our school band provided music for our local cenotaph ceremony. For four years (I wasn't in senior band in Grade 9), I saw the whole ceremony firsthand, from live on "stage". And the more I saw of it, the less comfortable it was. It seemed uncomfortably glamourous, with too much emphasis on the fact that the veterans were heroes and not enough on the waste and horror and pointlessness of war. (I've written some about that glamourization here.) I wasn't getting any sense of "Never Again," but I was detecting certain connotations of "and if you join the military, you can be a hero too!" So after high school I quietly stopped wearing a poppy. I knew Remembrance Day was really important to various people for various reasons and didn't want to be an ass about it, but I just didn't feel right playing along myself. I have since done a lot more research, especially about WWI (which was the original reason for Remembrance Day), and the more I learn the better I feel about my choice not to participate. The problem is, the standard assumption when I don't wear a poppy is that I'm completely ignorant of my history. In reality, when I was ignorant I was proudly wearing my poppy over my heart and hoping those old men in the navy jackets (who were OMG HEROES!) would notice that I remembered to say blow not grow.
Then today I saw an article about a revamped citizenship guide that would include "greater emphasis on Canada's military history and on the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and of Canada’s sacrifice in the First World War." That made me go "Huh?" because "sacrifice" implies that it's to achieve some goal, and the more I learn about WWI the less I agree with that assessment. I started reading up on it shortly after I finished university, when I realized that I didn't actually understand why it happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. But how does that lead to a war? So I read and read and read, and the more I read the more I came to realize that it was a pissing match. Countries were declaring war on each other because they wanted to go off and have a jolly good adventure or because they didn't want their penises to fall off. It didn't need to be a war, even under standards by which it is sometimes necessary to have wars. And young men, unaware of the hell that awaited them, went off to enlist to have a jolly good adventure with visions of dashing uniforms and shiny buttons dancing in their heads - the very kinds of images the heroic glamourization of our local cenotaph ceremony might give an impressionable young person.
I learned in History class that initially Remembrance Day was created by WWI vets (then Great War vets) with this very sentiment - that war was senseless and wasteful and foolish and Never Again. It wasn't a jolly good adventure, it was hell. So thinking about this, I found myself wondering if it was more important to real-life WWI vets that they be viewed as heroes (even if it meant WWI being seen as worthwhile) or that future generations see just how pointless war is (even if it meant that the vets don't get treated as heroes). Unfortunately, the last WWI vet in my family died when I was like 10 years old, and I wasn't quite at the point where these questions occurred to me yet. (I was still early enough in my education that I was all proud of myself for memorizing 14-18 and 39-45.)
But I did think of a story my grandmother once told me about the first time she voted. When she was young, the voting age was 21 (although apparently soldiers and vets under the age of 21 were also allowed to vote.) So by the time she was allowed to vote, she was already married with one small child and another one on the way. After a long day doing housework and chasing a toddler while heavily pregnant, the last thing she wanted was to squeeze her swollen feet into shoes, corral the toddler into a stroller, and walk all the way to the polling place. But when she told her husband this, he freaked. It was the maddest she'd ever seen him in their two years of marriage. He said this is what he fought for in WWII - this is what his buddies died for - so she was damn well going to go and vote. So she did, and is now very vociferous about making sure her descendants vote.
The goals in the other branch of my family were much more prosaic. They had spent the last several generations getting buffeted back and forth between German occupation and Russian occupation (with some of my ancestors having been, legally and honourably, conscripted on both sides at different points during WWI). All the surviving members of this branch of the family were civilians in occupied Europe during WWII and caught behind the iron curtain in its aftermath. For them, what Canada stands for is food - not having to wait in line for bread, supermarkets fully stocked whenever you want. I can best honour these ancestors by eating well and being strong and healthy, which is neither here nor there. (They'd also like me to be a devout Catholic and sprog lots of adorable babies, but we have to be realistic here.)
Interesting as this all is, I can't spend tomorrow eating and voting, not least of which because there aren't any elections for me to vote in tomorrow. (Things They Should Invent: hold elections on Remembrance Day to honour what our dead soldiers were fighting for?) So I thought some more about this. What were my ancestors actually, in real life, not in political spin, sacrificing for me to have?
I ran through a number of ideas, and then it came to me: freedom of expression. What I'm doing right here and now. I'm sure my ancestors living through and/or fighting against various flavours of fascist oppression in Europe would be quite gratified to know that any thought, idea, or experience I wish to share I can instantly post where the whole world can see it.
So tomorrow, in honour of the sacrifices made on my behalf, is blogathon day. Not about Remembrance Day, about everything and anything. A massive deluge of thought, belief, opinion, and expression. Hopefully I'll get to posting everything that's festering in my brain and my drafts folder, but if not there's at least gonna be a whole lot of words. My ancestors who sacrificed on my behalf probably wouldn't be thrilled with everything I have to say, but I'm sure they'd love the fact that I'm able to say it like this.
So that's what I'm doing tomorrow, and after much reflection I feel it is appropriate. However, I really resent the fact that if I don't explain this whole story, people will interpret my well-thought-out tribute as just playing around on the internet, ignorant of the significance of the day. That's almost as irksome as being put in the blue reading group and missing out on learning cat's cradle.
When I was in Montessori school, I wanted to play with these beads, but the teacher wouldn't let me because she said you had to be able to count to 10 to play with them. I could totally count to 10 - I could count to 100! But back then, at the age of 3 or 4, I didn't realize that she wanted me to show her I could count to 10, and just slunk off sad and confused.
When I was in Grade 2, I got really frustrated with how slowly my classmates read aloud. So rather than wait for them to struggle through a sentence, I'd read ahead and see how the story ended, then go onto the next story in the reader. By the time it was my turn to read, I was three stories ahead and had no idea where we were. So when it came time to put us into reading groups, my teacher put me into the blue group, which was the second-lowest. I was confused and rather humiliated, as I felt like I could read fluently. Eventually my parents intervened and I was bumped up to the green reading group, which was the highest, but not until after they'd all finished learning how to do cat's cradles.
When I was in Grade 7, a girl at my school was diagnosed with cancer, and some of her friends started raising money so she could buy a wig. I gave a significant amount of money to this fund - something like $5 or $10 when my weekly allowance at the time was $2 or $3. Then I came home from school and my father said he was writing his yearly cheque to the United Way, and asked if I'd like to add a donation. I said no thank you. So I got a lecture on why you have to be charitable. I really resented being treated that way just because I preferred to do the right thing quietly and humbly without gloating (I was still Catholic at the time and this was a virtue - c.f. Luke 18: 9-14 the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector) rather than giving money to an organization that seemed to spend an awful lot of money on giving its donors public bragging rights. (Which, incidentally, is the reason why my father has since stopped donating to the United Way.) That grated so much that since then I have only ever made anonymous charitable donations.
I got to thinking of all this because tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day is one of those things where people assume I'm ignorant when I don't go around holding forth at length about what's inside my head. It all started when I was in high school and our school band provided music for our local cenotaph ceremony. For four years (I wasn't in senior band in Grade 9), I saw the whole ceremony firsthand, from live on "stage". And the more I saw of it, the less comfortable it was. It seemed uncomfortably glamourous, with too much emphasis on the fact that the veterans were heroes and not enough on the waste and horror and pointlessness of war. (I've written some about that glamourization here.) I wasn't getting any sense of "Never Again," but I was detecting certain connotations of "and if you join the military, you can be a hero too!" So after high school I quietly stopped wearing a poppy. I knew Remembrance Day was really important to various people for various reasons and didn't want to be an ass about it, but I just didn't feel right playing along myself. I have since done a lot more research, especially about WWI (which was the original reason for Remembrance Day), and the more I learn the better I feel about my choice not to participate. The problem is, the standard assumption when I don't wear a poppy is that I'm completely ignorant of my history. In reality, when I was ignorant I was proudly wearing my poppy over my heart and hoping those old men in the navy jackets (who were OMG HEROES!) would notice that I remembered to say blow not grow.
Then today I saw an article about a revamped citizenship guide that would include "greater emphasis on Canada's military history and on the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and of Canada’s sacrifice in the First World War." That made me go "Huh?" because "sacrifice" implies that it's to achieve some goal, and the more I learn about WWI the less I agree with that assessment. I started reading up on it shortly after I finished university, when I realized that I didn't actually understand why it happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. But how does that lead to a war? So I read and read and read, and the more I read the more I came to realize that it was a pissing match. Countries were declaring war on each other because they wanted to go off and have a jolly good adventure or because they didn't want their penises to fall off. It didn't need to be a war, even under standards by which it is sometimes necessary to have wars. And young men, unaware of the hell that awaited them, went off to enlist to have a jolly good adventure with visions of dashing uniforms and shiny buttons dancing in their heads - the very kinds of images the heroic glamourization of our local cenotaph ceremony might give an impressionable young person.
I learned in History class that initially Remembrance Day was created by WWI vets (then Great War vets) with this very sentiment - that war was senseless and wasteful and foolish and Never Again. It wasn't a jolly good adventure, it was hell. So thinking about this, I found myself wondering if it was more important to real-life WWI vets that they be viewed as heroes (even if it meant WWI being seen as worthwhile) or that future generations see just how pointless war is (even if it meant that the vets don't get treated as heroes). Unfortunately, the last WWI vet in my family died when I was like 10 years old, and I wasn't quite at the point where these questions occurred to me yet. (I was still early enough in my education that I was all proud of myself for memorizing 14-18 and 39-45.)
But I did think of a story my grandmother once told me about the first time she voted. When she was young, the voting age was 21 (although apparently soldiers and vets under the age of 21 were also allowed to vote.) So by the time she was allowed to vote, she was already married with one small child and another one on the way. After a long day doing housework and chasing a toddler while heavily pregnant, the last thing she wanted was to squeeze her swollen feet into shoes, corral the toddler into a stroller, and walk all the way to the polling place. But when she told her husband this, he freaked. It was the maddest she'd ever seen him in their two years of marriage. He said this is what he fought for in WWII - this is what his buddies died for - so she was damn well going to go and vote. So she did, and is now very vociferous about making sure her descendants vote.
The goals in the other branch of my family were much more prosaic. They had spent the last several generations getting buffeted back and forth between German occupation and Russian occupation (with some of my ancestors having been, legally and honourably, conscripted on both sides at different points during WWI). All the surviving members of this branch of the family were civilians in occupied Europe during WWII and caught behind the iron curtain in its aftermath. For them, what Canada stands for is food - not having to wait in line for bread, supermarkets fully stocked whenever you want. I can best honour these ancestors by eating well and being strong and healthy, which is neither here nor there. (They'd also like me to be a devout Catholic and sprog lots of adorable babies, but we have to be realistic here.)
Interesting as this all is, I can't spend tomorrow eating and voting, not least of which because there aren't any elections for me to vote in tomorrow. (Things They Should Invent: hold elections on Remembrance Day to honour what our dead soldiers were fighting for?) So I thought some more about this. What were my ancestors actually, in real life, not in political spin, sacrificing for me to have?
I ran through a number of ideas, and then it came to me: freedom of expression. What I'm doing right here and now. I'm sure my ancestors living through and/or fighting against various flavours of fascist oppression in Europe would be quite gratified to know that any thought, idea, or experience I wish to share I can instantly post where the whole world can see it.
So tomorrow, in honour of the sacrifices made on my behalf, is blogathon day. Not about Remembrance Day, about everything and anything. A massive deluge of thought, belief, opinion, and expression. Hopefully I'll get to posting everything that's festering in my brain and my drafts folder, but if not there's at least gonna be a whole lot of words. My ancestors who sacrificed on my behalf probably wouldn't be thrilled with everything I have to say, but I'm sure they'd love the fact that I'm able to say it like this.
So that's what I'm doing tomorrow, and after much reflection I feel it is appropriate. However, I really resent the fact that if I don't explain this whole story, people will interpret my well-thought-out tribute as just playing around on the internet, ignorant of the significance of the day. That's almost as irksome as being put in the blue reading group and missing out on learning cat's cradle.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Has anyone bothered to question the nature of military life?
This train of thought started here but veered widely off and is now almost entirely unrelated.
Military training - and by extension military life - is intentionally dehumanizing. We've all seen boot camp movies, we all have a general idea of how it works. They break you down through humiliation and dehumanization then build you back up in the image they need. And then they own your ass and you go where and do what you're told. That's just how it works.
But I wonder if anyone has ever bothered to truly question and think critically about whether this is necessary? I think everyone tends to just generally accept that that's how the military works, that's what makes it the military. It's always been like that, that's what people expect from the military. But is it actually necessary? Are they mindfully doing it this way for a reason, or are they just doing it this way because that's how they've always done it? Is anyone giving this serious thought?
Military training - and by extension military life - is intentionally dehumanizing. We've all seen boot camp movies, we all have a general idea of how it works. They break you down through humiliation and dehumanization then build you back up in the image they need. And then they own your ass and you go where and do what you're told. That's just how it works.
But I wonder if anyone has ever bothered to truly question and think critically about whether this is necessary? I think everyone tends to just generally accept that that's how the military works, that's what makes it the military. It's always been like that, that's what people expect from the military. But is it actually necessary? Are they mindfully doing it this way for a reason, or are they just doing it this way because that's how they've always done it? Is anyone giving this serious thought?
Sunday, August 10, 2008
So it seems I'm capable of militaristic sentiment
Have you ever seen those World War II propaganda posters that show the evil shadow of fascism lurking over cherubic children? You know the sentiment they're intended to evoke to make people run off and join the army?
The thing with the nutters at Tim McLean's funeral did that to me.
I wanted, in a very aggressive, militaristic sort of way, to run off to Winnipeg and get all in those fuckers' face with one of those hardcore Pride supersoakers. I wanted to sabotage their every movement and vandalize their cars and sexually harass the women (Q: Why? A: Because it's Teh Gay that they're afraid of) and all kinds of things that are probably illegal. If I had been there in the human wall and the nutters had shown up and mob mentality had made things turn violent, I could quite readily have been swept along and would totally have punched out a nutter at the slightest excuse.
I seriously had no idea I was capable of this kind of sentiment. It has never happened before. The furthest I've gotten before was a desire for cool calculated revenge to be followed by schadenfreude. I've never had this aggressive militaristic sort of thing happening before. I've never been in a place where I could have been swept along with angry mob mentality before. Not even about Paul Bernardo, although I can't give you a good reason for why that is.
But it looks like I do have a threshold, and it looks like it's right about at the worst people in the world. (The article is nothing new, I just like the headline.)
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this now.
The thing with the nutters at Tim McLean's funeral did that to me.
I wanted, in a very aggressive, militaristic sort of way, to run off to Winnipeg and get all in those fuckers' face with one of those hardcore Pride supersoakers. I wanted to sabotage their every movement and vandalize their cars and sexually harass the women (Q: Why? A: Because it's Teh Gay that they're afraid of) and all kinds of things that are probably illegal. If I had been there in the human wall and the nutters had shown up and mob mentality had made things turn violent, I could quite readily have been swept along and would totally have punched out a nutter at the slightest excuse.
I seriously had no idea I was capable of this kind of sentiment. It has never happened before. The furthest I've gotten before was a desire for cool calculated revenge to be followed by schadenfreude. I've never had this aggressive militaristic sort of thing happening before. I've never been in a place where I could have been swept along with angry mob mentality before. Not even about Paul Bernardo, although I can't give you a good reason for why that is.
But it looks like I do have a threshold, and it looks like it's right about at the worst people in the world. (The article is nothing new, I just like the headline.)
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this now.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Strange cartoon?
I'm trying to figure out if I'm reading today's Toronto Star editorial cartoon right. (Yes, that's the Hamilton Spectator cartoonist - that's what the Star printed today.)
I'm seeing in that cartoon the passing the torch symbolism from In Flanders Fields, but it seems to be endorsing that passing of the torch. The characters might be smiling, and at any rate they certainly don't look particularly grim about it. Because they're all soldiers and only soldiers, and because they're all labelled as wars, it really looks to me like the poppy is symbolizing warfare itself. But then he passes it on to a child? With what looks like a smile on his face? Without hesitating or questioning why he's doing so? So they're essentially declaring warfare inevitable without questioning that declaration, or even bothering to look grim while they do it? I don't think that's what my great-grandfathers had in mind when they were sitting in muddy shitty rat-infested holes shooting at each other.*
The text to the right doesn't give a clear interpretation (I think it's a newspaper article, not the artist's own commentary), but it certainly doesn't do anything to make me think my interpretation is wrong.
(On a purely artistic note, the transition from sepia to b&w to colour is particularly good.)
Update (maybe?): No reply from the cartoonist yet, but it occurred to me in the shower that it would make much better sense if all those soldiers were dead. That would also explain why the Afghanistan soldier has a different colour background than the child (I assumed it was due to geography). Mr. MacKay? You still out there?
--
*I can't trace every branch of my family tree back to WWI, but based on pure geography it seems quite possible that half my ancestors were on the other side. I'll never know this for certain, because my surviving ancestors would not tell anyone if this were true. The more I learn about WWI, the less confident I am that it actually defended our freedoms or way of life, but even if it did then surely any gratitude I'm supposed to have to WWI veterans for trying to preserve half my ancestors' freedom and way of life is cancelled out by the fact that they were trying to destroy the other half of my ancestors' freedom and way of life? At any rate, all WWI seems to have done for me is created the conditions for WWII, which created the conditions for my family to flee Europe, which made it possible for my parents to meet and make me. And I'll tell you right now, as the person in the best position to know, my existence isn't worth all that trouble.
I'm seeing in that cartoon the passing the torch symbolism from In Flanders Fields, but it seems to be endorsing that passing of the torch. The characters might be smiling, and at any rate they certainly don't look particularly grim about it. Because they're all soldiers and only soldiers, and because they're all labelled as wars, it really looks to me like the poppy is symbolizing warfare itself. But then he passes it on to a child? With what looks like a smile on his face? Without hesitating or questioning why he's doing so? So they're essentially declaring warfare inevitable without questioning that declaration, or even bothering to look grim while they do it? I don't think that's what my great-grandfathers had in mind when they were sitting in muddy shitty rat-infested holes shooting at each other.*
The text to the right doesn't give a clear interpretation (I think it's a newspaper article, not the artist's own commentary), but it certainly doesn't do anything to make me think my interpretation is wrong.
(On a purely artistic note, the transition from sepia to b&w to colour is particularly good.)
Update (maybe?): No reply from the cartoonist yet, but it occurred to me in the shower that it would make much better sense if all those soldiers were dead. That would also explain why the Afghanistan soldier has a different colour background than the child (I assumed it was due to geography). Mr. MacKay? You still out there?
--
*I can't trace every branch of my family tree back to WWI, but based on pure geography it seems quite possible that half my ancestors were on the other side. I'll never know this for certain, because my surviving ancestors would not tell anyone if this were true. The more I learn about WWI, the less confident I am that it actually defended our freedoms or way of life, but even if it did then surely any gratitude I'm supposed to have to WWI veterans for trying to preserve half my ancestors' freedom and way of life is cancelled out by the fact that they were trying to destroy the other half of my ancestors' freedom and way of life? At any rate, all WWI seems to have done for me is created the conditions for WWII, which created the conditions for my family to flee Europe, which made it possible for my parents to meet and make me. And I'll tell you right now, as the person in the best position to know, my existence isn't worth all that trouble.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Those assholes aren't worth dying for
"Roll With It" by Ani DiFranco just came up on my iTunes. (Can't find a youtube or audio link.)
I'd completely forgotten about this song because the album it's on isn't one of my favourites, but I wish I'd had it in my repetoire in 2003!
I'd completely forgotten about this song because the album it's on isn't one of my favourites, but I wish I'd had it in my repetoire in 2003!
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Another reason to treat detainees humanely
Remember in March 2003, when the US first started invading Iraq and you could turn on the TV and "watch war"? Remember how they were reporting that huge numbers of Iraqi soldiers were just outright surrendering? I don't know if this was true or not - I never heard much follow-up after that, and it is the sort of thing that makes for good propoganda - but the reporting made it sound like at the first sight of American military the Iraqi soldiers were waving white flags, to deliberately escape from whatever kind of hellhole the Iraqi military was. Upon hearing this mentioned several times, I turned to my father (I was at my parents' house that weekend) and said "So if this is true, that means that being a US prisoner of war is significantly better than being a free Iraqi soldier."
Obviously, I hadn't yet heard of Abu Ghraib.
This memory came back to me the other day, when the radio was talking about how people taken prisoner by Canadians in Afghanistan are treated. It occurs to me that, apart from the fact that we should be better than that, and apart from the fact that torturing our prisoners invites people to torture are citizens, and apart from the fact that it's ineffective anyway, and apart from basic human decency, this is another reason why we should treat our prisoners humanely.
Imagine if everyone, everyone in the world, knew that if they surrendered to or were arrested by a Canadian soldier, they would be put somewhere that's clean and sanitary, with sufficient food and health care, and they absolutely would not be beaten, raped, or tortured.
Clearly, the pragmatic decision would be to surrender, or to go quietly if you get arrested. Obviously some people aren't going to go along with this, but that would be out of ideology, not out of self-preservation. If our prisoners can get tortured, that gives people the motivation to do everything possible to avoid being taken prisoner, lest the unspeakable happen. Now if they didn't have this motivation to do everything possible to evade our troops, imagine how much easier that would make our military's job. Some people are still going to fight them because there is ideology and even fanticism involved, but others will have far greater motivation to go along quietly, or to surrender, or even just to treat our troops with a grudging respect. Imagine a situation where those rivers of surrendering enemy soliders - whether they were real or a creation of propganda - were unquestionably making the best decision for themselves and for their families. Wouldn't that make things better for everyone?
Obviously, I hadn't yet heard of Abu Ghraib.
This memory came back to me the other day, when the radio was talking about how people taken prisoner by Canadians in Afghanistan are treated. It occurs to me that, apart from the fact that we should be better than that, and apart from the fact that torturing our prisoners invites people to torture are citizens, and apart from the fact that it's ineffective anyway, and apart from basic human decency, this is another reason why we should treat our prisoners humanely.
Imagine if everyone, everyone in the world, knew that if they surrendered to or were arrested by a Canadian soldier, they would be put somewhere that's clean and sanitary, with sufficient food and health care, and they absolutely would not be beaten, raped, or tortured.
Clearly, the pragmatic decision would be to surrender, or to go quietly if you get arrested. Obviously some people aren't going to go along with this, but that would be out of ideology, not out of self-preservation. If our prisoners can get tortured, that gives people the motivation to do everything possible to avoid being taken prisoner, lest the unspeakable happen. Now if they didn't have this motivation to do everything possible to evade our troops, imagine how much easier that would make our military's job. Some people are still going to fight them because there is ideology and even fanticism involved, but others will have far greater motivation to go along quietly, or to surrender, or even just to treat our troops with a grudging respect. Imagine a situation where those rivers of surrendering enemy soliders - whether they were real or a creation of propganda - were unquestionably making the best decision for themselves and for their families. Wouldn't that make things better for everyone?
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