After finally getting over my summer laziness and deciding to start reading obsessively again, I managed to finish Studs Terkel's celebrated novel, The Good War.The entire book is an informal collection of interviews Studs Terkel recorded in the decades following World War 2. The interviews flow freely from all different perspectives, including soldiers that were in direct combat from both sides, to regular civilians caught in bombings.
The interesting parts of the novel are in the divisional split of opinions concerning the war. You have shell shocked veterans who will tell you that the conflict was a terrible atrocity that should never be repeated, while another battle hardened soldier will tell you it was the best thing to happen to America.
Of course, many of these opinions have similar backgrounds depicting young gung-ho teenagers with a patriotic streak. Many of them end with horror stories of detached limbs and lost friends.
The book ends with interviews of young children on a Chicago street, their lives no longer looking forward to their lives, but to expect an unnatural death. Although these kids were interviewed at the height of the Cold War, many of their fears still ring true with today's youngsters. The same understanding, the same expectation, still exists.
Children are now raised to be desensitized to violence in the American culture. Although they may not understand the horrors of war in person, they understand better the perspective of death and its inevitability through the world conflicts that occur today. Our culture of death obsession, our fear of the end in relation to war, is vastly different and detached than the views of our grandfathers. With an almost unstoppable flow of images and videos from the nearest battlefield, we now grow up understanding that human suffering is a much more normal and unstoppable condition, rather than being a simple blight of human nature that befalls the innocent. We've grown to understand that it's much more complicated than black and white when it comes to war and death.
But I digress.
The real point, the real moral of this book, is the simple cliche war is bad. It is very bad. Bad along the lines of an H. G. Wells quote stating "If we don't end war, war will end us."
World War 2 was what really changed America into a unstoppable war machine. It spawned the shift from civilian control of the military to the government. It birthed what Eisenhower so famously stated in his farewell speech: the military-industrial complex.
America can't complain. The government really can't be blamed for starting daily wildfires around the globe if the people allow it to happen. At least, that's the idea.
Part of what I've come to understand about American government is that the peoples' mistrust in Washington stems from their lack of control over what goes on. In a democratic republic like ours, we vest our power into representatives that work around the clock in a white building that is a symbol of power rather than practicality. We can't trust that our representatives will comply with any of our requests. When we vote for them, it requires a leap of faith.
Following this form of government, it's not hard to understand how people become upset when their representatives go rogue, and well, don't represent. That's what drives a lack of interest in Capitol Hill for the average Joe. It fuels discontent, mistrust, and anger when the government makes big decisions we have a disturbing lack of control over.
Before World War 2, we could have a say in going to war. There wasn't anything like the Presidential War Powers Act (and the more recent War Powers Resolution) to give the President leeway in deploying troops carte blanche.
What really disturbs me is the real lack of understanding, the lack of knowing just how little control we exert in the decisions that shape whether or not we go to war. All our leaders have to do is pick up the red phone and whisper a single codeword, and the next world war could start. Not long after, a nuke could land on your house and kill you and your family.
Isn't that the real modern understanding of death? Knowing that as an ordinary citizen, you won't live to see tomorrow just because someone at the top disregards your opinions? Is deciding your fate without your consent?
Then again, I did say that electing your representatives takes a lot of faith.
