I used to be extremely idealistic. I developed a great amount of pride and respect for our nation and the military, to the point where they kind of became my inspiration, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I was reading about our strategic bombing campaigns during World War II, researching for evidence to support position that the nuclear raids on Japan were really not significantly worse than our day to day strategic bombardments. Well, I found a site that had eye witness accounts of the bombing from the ground.

Well, one of the accounts consisted of a woman telling about her escape from a city engulfed in napalm, with an infant and a friend. I'm going to put it in spoiler tags because it is a bit disturbing. I think she was carrying the baby on her back. She said that as she was escaping the city she heard the child scream. When she looked back at it, the napalm had burned through the back of the child's neck so see could see flame in the back of it's throat.

I don't know if that's as disturbing to any of you as it is to me, but as a fifteen year old kid, it kind of got to me. I really don't/didn't know if it was true, but that wasn't really the point. It just kind of made me realize on a disturbing level how awful war was, and how you can really can't idealize one particular cause or organization.

This all caught up to me when I was watching Spiderman with my family. The opening scene where Spiderman jumps on a the American flag was such a blatant invocation of those patriotic ideals, I just sort of realized in a flash that it was all bull****. It wasn't that patriotism didn't have it place, it was that my faith in humanity has been shattered. That one experience forced me to see everything else with a new objectivity. There was black, but no white, just shades of dirty gray.

I mention it, because every time I think about that baby, it creeps me the hell out.

It took a spiderman epiphany to realize that war is bad?

Nope. It took a war epiphany to realize that spiderman was bad.

Oh, also post things of similar significance. I guess. That was why I made the thread title plural.

What really matters is what an individual does, and believes in.

I don't think spiderman would take kindly to those words.

Ha! Spiders don't even have ears. Only very, very sensitive legs hairs which couldn't make out a words.

Reading 1984 for the first time I have little ones pretty much all the time, Eye opening book.

Are there spiders?

I think the real problem is that sometimes the army covers up som VERY troubling issues, such as rape, murder and friendly fire. Which only hurts our image, spreads distrust amongst the world and the worse part is, some good people have to go along with it, under a threat of some form or another.

Of course, not every soldier is a rapist, a murderer or a fragger. But the few rotten eggs really destroy all our efforts.

I didn't really think so, but I was already an adult by the time I read it. It doesn't help that I had the preconception of such a dystopia being improbable in a lot of senses; Brave New World gave me a lot more to think about, since I see elements already developing in society (e.g. over-prescription of antidepressants and stimulants, discussions about private insurers eventually mandating the use of artificial wombs, complete tolerance for and frequent aggrandizement of promiscuity, regulating reproduction and the class struggle as economic policy).

But then, neither author predicted that public censorship would fall to the wayside in favor of private censorship. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to read Jennifer Government.

A single bee is only interested in going out and collecting honey, but a thousand bees will still try to sting you to death.

Given the context of the discussion, I'm pretty sure the hundreds of millions of people who study collective intelligence would disagree with your statement.

Edit:
Once upon a time rape was considered a spoil of war, and each soldier was entitled his due. The Japanese certainly had no compunctions about it when they invaded Nanking during World War 2, and back in the early 90s the Bosnian Serbs basically institutionalized rape. When do you suppose it became unacceptable for a soldier to, as we say, "dip his wick?"

Depending on the source, an American woman has roughly a 1:5 chance of being raped during her lifetime. Men make up about half of the population, so you have a mean of 0.2 rapes/man. Here's some homework, SF_GoldG_01, since your teachers aren't giving you nearly enough: does Iraq have a higher or lower rate of rapes/soldier than the American average of 0.2? The answer may surprise you! It won't surprise me, though!

Are you suggesting that every Military Force of America should be held responsible for the actions of certain incidents here and there, by a few soldiers? That they should be held responsible because of civillian casualties, most of the time collateral damage and unfortunately unavoidable, even if most of them weren't even present, directly or indirectly linked to said situations? Then maybe we should hang the parents and siblings of criminals, because they're related and family, and helped that man grow, so that he could later become a criminal.

That is why, you should do what you believe. Not betray yourself.


EDIT:

(without looking it up) Of course its higher, that doesn't mean the majority, or even a third of the army are rapists. What do you expect? In a war zone where people are struggling to rebuild their nation, with major lacks of security, and anarchy rising, you can expect a good increase in crime, until the situation is locked down.

Also some American soldiers are responsible, yes. But the entire U.S. Army / Marines / Navy, shouldn't take the blame.

EDIT2:

I'm on vacation Jon'C, national holidays till thursday. HAHA.

100% rhetoric, 0% content. This really has nothing to do with what anybody has posted. I suspect you prepared a quick retort in advance just in case someone responded to something you wrote.

It's lower, almost by half (~0.13).

"Of course." Well aren't you so smart.

Mexico has longer holidays than the rest of the world? How interesting.

I agree, I was enjoying 1984 until the bit where they explained how the dystopia came into being. It just made no logical sense, there is no way it could happen. I thought Brave New World was a less enjoyable read, but was a lot more thought-provoking.

I liked 1984 until it turned into a textbook. The entire thing is just George Orwell proselytizing about how totalitarianism is bad by way of a really bad strawman.

I think the real reason Brave New World is thought-provoking is because it was written with the exact opposite approach: Aldous Huxley originally thought his story was going to be about how social engineering is a good thing.

Nothing wrong with feeling patriotic about ones country. But I must admit that Americans relay like to go over the top with showing these things. Patriotism should be something a person feels individualy. All the stuff you see in the movies just makes it funny. Whenever we see a cheese patriot moment (something like the speech in independents day) people say "that is so American" in a negative kind of way. It also creates the image of Americans who believe that they are the only ones who can save the world and are the center of the universe.

but... but... we went to the moon!

one of these days, alice...