Roll Out!

I just went to see "Transformers" and "Live Free or Die Hard." Both really high impact, thrilling, action-packed movies. I loved it, especially Transformers. But man, why is our culture so imbued with this shoot em up violence soaked mentality? I concede that I am part of this group of people who love to watch violent heroes saving the day through punches, kicks, assault rifles and explosions...

I've been socialized that way but I think a way out of such a mentality is worth looking into. A culture, epitomized by movies like these, allow a coward like George W. Bush to walk on to a air craft carrier and have Americans applaud. It allows world leaders to forestall social programs, food, and education for weapons. It allows our leaders to bomb other countries, talk about war and payback and revenge and striking back and being strong, and flexing, and proving how powerful we are, and putting on this constant show of force while children in the most powerful country on earth go to sleep hungry. I recently heard that Pakistan is constructing or has already constructed a third plutonium reactor in order to expand its nuclear weapons cache... Pakistan! that has more than a quarter of its people living in abject poverty! Don't think this is a problem islolated to so called "third-world" countries. The US government is currently spending BILLIONS of dollars to fight a losing unjustified war in Iraq while forty million Americans are uninsured, while people die on the streets because they have no home, and while millions receive a poor education with no music, art, or alternative programs!

The point is, the people of the world, the people of the United States, allow this to happen. "We don't want to seem like a bunch of sissies." "We have to show the world what we're made of." We've bought into this machismo, this male stereotyped bullshit that the only way to stand up is with a fist. What about showing the world that we're made of compassion, of reason, of the fabrics that weave the most admirable aspects of humanity? Now I'm not a pacifist, but I'm working on it. People told Mahatma Ghandi during World War II that if Hitler were allowed to continue on his conquest without violent reisistence he would cause the world extreme pain and death. Ghandi's response was rhetorical. He asked whether the current war had caused no pain or loss.

I do not know what a world without war, without armies, and without weapons would look like. But do we not have an imagination? Have we been prohibited to dream by some unstoppable power? We invent machines that can fly, replace vital organs, have cloned animals, have dissected the entire human genome, sent men and women to space, but cannot devise a way to solve conflicts peaceably? Nonsense. There are many who would have us believe that we cannot, that we should not dream such dreams and to do so is idiocy. Those who would have us believe this are many times gun manufacturers, generals, presidents, politicians and others who gain power from that belief.

Let's dare to dream people. Let us dream of heroes and sheroes that don't hold guns, revolutionaries that don't blow shit up, and leaders that don't have to die. Like I said before, I love Transformers, but we don't necessarily need a talking mac truck, with a deep booming voice and all types of missiles and guns attached to his arms to make significant change. Help me out, let's dare to dream.