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War Porn
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Twisted Branches war porn abound
people cheer
watching the other engulfed in flames
and blood splashed across the ground
though they cry when their flag covers a body,
when they just as quick lift that flag in celebration
seeing that other flag over a coffin,
the truth is ultimately exposed
laying out for all to see
an open casket in the mall
look down, as you pass on by
and see that we're dead, inside
war porn abound
another year
watching the other engulfed in flames
and blood splashed across the ground
yes, they're evil, yes we're good
what ever fantasy you needed to get off
time will disrobe every naked ambition,
even one as sad and little as yours
one day standing there with the roof torn off,
desperately trying to cover your screen
and your privates with a flag,
but it's all blown away
laying out for all to see
an open casket in the mall
look down, as I pass on by
and see that we're dead, inside
During my childhood in the
During my childhood in the sixties, we were subjected to all kinds of war porn in support of the conflict in Viet Nam. In second grade, many of us boys asked for, and received from our parents, small "green berets" during the time that particular ballad was on the radio. In my school, our third grade gym teacher was a former Marine and he wasted at least a quarter of each gyn class hour teaching us to respond to his shouts like TenHut and ParadeRest, and so forth. Even in Cub Scouts, and, later, my two years in Scouting, there was an intensely militaristic "vibe" in everything we were taught and required to do; that vive, and, also, a tacit demand for conformity. Even when I went up to college, my parents were dismayed that I attend class in bell-bottom jeans and, on balmy days, flipflops instead of shoes and socks.
Starward
Thanks for sharing that
Thanks for sharing that experience, Starward. My dad was in Vietnam, and it really wasn't till the 70's that there was enough push back to drive some of these methods out of the school system. Though I think it also had to do with a shift away from drafts and transforming most of the public into mass consumers. Schooling took on a new task, which was to train people to spend their money, instead of their lives. But there was always that backdrop which remained - it was far more subtle for me and my classmates than for yours. We had the ROTC presence in High School, and officers began visiting our classes as early as 6th grade.
Of course, on the television I recall very well how heavy the war porn was for the Persian Gulf War. "This Scuds For You", for example. Comedy, such as pitiful shows like the Simpsons, played a big role in promoting Saddam Hussein as some sort of unique and particular anti-christ that we had to stop and kill (meanwhile we killed countless thousands of peasants around him, and he thrived for another decade and change). Post-9/11/01, it was far worse. That was what sold me on throwing out the television (well, it wasn't mine to throw out, so I just stopped watching). I've never owned a television, actually. I was just reaching the age where I would be buying one, and the constant repetition of showing a plane crashing into World Trade Center Tower 2 convinced me that would be unhealthy to do so. It made Genesis (the band) into prophets anew: "Now you never did see such a terrible thing, as you'd seen last night on the t/v. Maybe if we're lucky they will show it again, such a terrible thing to see!" Greatest choice I ever made, I'm certain.
And thank you for telling me
And thank you for telling me about your experience. I remember hearing from my grandmother that when my father, who was basically a naive farmboy, enlisted in the Marines, his personality radically changed during his experience of boot camp. Apparently, after graduating from basic training, and before being deployed to the battleship Nevada, he had a few days leave at home and, although he looked like her son and had the name of her son, she did not recognize much of her son's personality. Of corse, I only ever knew the post-war personality.
(A bit of trivia: during a reunion of his unit in 1986, my father and his surviving friends were given some information by the former captain of the battleship . . . that they had been selected to be the first unit to invade the Japanese main island, and that their death certificates had already been filled out by the captain a couple of weeks in advance, because the planners in Washington had estimated that thousands of soldiers in the first invasive force would die on the beaches just to establish a foothold. However, three days before the invasion was due to begin, the battleship received orders to turn fully about and head away from Japan at the fastest possible speed. My father could remember feeling the ship turn radically, and then the engines running so hard that the body of the battleship actually shook. President Truman had decided to deploy the atomic bombs, and the designers had badly overestimated the blast radius, which they believed would reach the main seas around Japan. But at least he did not die in the invasion, as had been expected, and then thirteen years after the war . . . he adopted me!) If this has been too verbose, feel free to delete it.
Starward
You're welcome, and the
You're welcome, and the length of your response would never be a reason for me to delete (not that I delete comments, anyway, but I appreciate such sharing).
The story of your father's final brush with death during the war, and the especially world-altering events it was connected to really brings home the truth that our existences are woven by such fine, tender threads. There's that saying "we won't pass this way again", and - as far as I can imagine - even if we were all given a chance to do it over again, I don't think there's any chance it'd end up remotely the same. The very stories of our lives are against all odds. In that, we can find not just hope, but confident belief, in perserverance.
If you don't mind me asking, around how old were you when you were adopted?
I was five months old when I
I was five months old when I was adopted in 1958. Later, in 1995, I inquired into my adoption file, as was my right, and found out that my birth mother had been a high school girl and my birth father was a young man of the same age of whom her parents did not aoprove. Her father, my maternal birth grandfather, had a PhD in Chemistry, was director of research for a major American corporation, was an elected elder in the Presbyterian Church and, like I once was, a thirty-second degree Freemason. He was also, according to the records clerk who pulled my file, apparently a first-class bastard, as he bribed the family court judge who presided over my adoption (and told my birth mother that were wishes carried no weight with the court); he also bribed the adoption agency attorney and several of the medical staff who delivered me. This was discovered in 1995 because the official file also contained, probably by error, ledger pages that the judge had kept---apparently the judge arranged the bribes and made the payments on my birth-grandfather's behalf, and then kept a record of it which ended up accidentally included in the file, The judge also knew the people who adopted me through their involvement in the political party to which they all belonged, and he had told them that he was doing them a favor by rushing the adoption through and cutting corners (which was what my birth-grandfather had paid him to do anyhow). By another odd coincidence, both my adopted mother and my first-wife's father were employed by the corporate division over which my birth-grandfather presided, although none of them were acquainted with each other. My birth father "went bad" after my birth mother's father forcibly broke them up. He later married, moved to Richmond Indiana, where---during the summer of my seventeenth year---he came home early from a business tript, caught his wife in bed with the next door neighbor, and pulled a gun from under his jacket and blew her brains out. He then called the police om himself and surrendered to them, and did a ten year stretch for manslaughter. Here is the final irony: in the cemetery where my adopted parents are buried, they are located less than a bundred yars from the graves of my birth mother's parents---the scheming corporate exec and his alcoholic wife. How's that for a tale? Truth is always stranger than fiction.
Starward