Wednesday, May 6, 2009
blogggggggggggggg
This essay is quite relavent to Johnny Got his Gun. D'Souza discusses the way that fighting a war that is based on something distant like Islamic fundamentalism, will result in a significant loss of willpower. In a similar sense, Joe is hidden from the public to censor the horrors of war to prevent the loss of willpower among other Americans. Joe is one outcome of War, but nobody advertises the gruesome outcomes (Except Driver's Ed and this book). If every candy bar contained a picture of a hobos rotting, cavity ridden teeth on it, then significantly fewer children would eat as much candy. The reality is that eating candy could result in that situation, but that is not presented. The part that is presented is a happy person enjoying the luxurious sugary candy bar, strumming his banjo, (or some other completely unrelated instrument), and making some remark about how awesome the taste of the item is. War is advertised the same way because the dead were shown America would have no army and would be virtually defenseless to its enemies. Johnny Got His Gun also argues that wars should only be fought for issues personally relavent to oneself, which I personally disagree with. Anyone who has read or heard the poem Martin Niemiller's poem on the holocaust memorial would understand that only fighting for oneself is a fatally flawed system. "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because i wasn't a communist... Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up." One cannot just passively sit down and watch things that are valuable to others escape them because humans require unity to accomplish their goals. Although the army is not a perfect system, it combines the moral values of many and secures them. You cannot please everyone, but supporting only fighting for the wars you believe in pleases no one because you will lose them all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment