Why is it that American boys love the thought of war? If you look back in history around every war period that involves America, all the men/boys were uber excited about the prospect of enduring extremely hard periods of time in training, filthy living conditions and the opportunity to blast some poor fellow human being who unfortunately happens to be a soldier on the opposite side of the fight. As a girl, I guess I just don't get what is so fascinating about carrying around weapons and using them to blast their fellow human beings into oblivion!
Are all guys attracted to violence? Almost every guy that I know is super into some sort of intense strategy game, whether its WOW(or any other video game), paintball, etc...and it makes me wonder if those guys consider war to just be another intense strategy game where they get to flex their muscles and use their brain power to manipulate the results that effect the entire world.
Or does the love of war come from some sort of nationalistic pride? If that is correct, I'm inclined to think that they are basing that nationalistic pride in a country/idea that doesn't deserve any one's pride. Where does this nationalistic pride some from anyway? I'm inclined to think that it comes from the myth of the "American Dream" and America's reputation as being the "Land of the free". Unfortunately both of those reasons are not worth any amount of people being separated from their families and potentially being killed in someone else's lunge for political power.
The "American Dream" is a myth that can be easily shelved right next to the optimistic Utopian worldview, thus making both ideas impossible because of the law of entropy. If everyone were to stop hallucinating about the "American Dream" and a worldwide utopia straight out of Brave New World its quite possible that more people could/would be happy.
America is not the "Land of the free" because people are still being enslaved in many different aspects right now. The worldwide slave trade is larger than it was pre-Civil War, and it by no means excludes the United States (Trafficking In Persons Report 2008). Plus, almost every American is mentally if not physically enslaved to the consumerist culture that rules our nation with great glee.
Its odd that America's negative characteristics are a lot more credible than its positive ones. As for the negative characteristics--such as: "Bush is an idiot", etc--they appear to all stem from the fact that there is a war goin' on baby. Everyone has a different reason for hating President Bush's foreign and domestic policies. I've got two responses to all that nonsensical hatred: Where is your respect for your elected leader? and do you seriously think you could do any better? If you hate Bush for whatever he did/didn't do to you please think about those for a minute.
So with all the hoopla, bumperstickers, and chain emails sporting the rather...boastful declaration, "I'm proud to be American", my usual response would be *manical laughter*, *deletes chain message because it said at the bottom that I'm a moran if I don't forward it to all my contacts*. It all comes down to the fact that I'm NOT proud to be an American because America is nothing to be proud of. Entropy will decimate anyone's dreams of a perfect nation filled with personal freedom, and I'm much more interested in the everlasting kingdom of Heaven.
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