What's Wrong With Kansans? (Part II)

There's a line from a World War I humorous/patriotic song ("humorous/patriotic"? Yes, it was possible at one time) that goes something like, "I don't know what the war's all about but you bet, by gosh, I'll soon find out." Well, the millions who marched off to the trenches back then _did_ "soon find out" what war is all about -- blood, dismemberment, filth, and death, among other charming things. What they most assuredly did _not_ find out was what the war was _really_ all about -- for the simple reason that World War I was "the war about nothing" (a la Seinfeld), and of course World War II was built on the foundation of a war about nothing. (Pat Buchanan makes similar points in his recent book.) I suppose that if everyone who marched to war insisted on good reasons -- on an air-tight proof that the war was just -- we would have many fewer wars. But we would also have much more PTSD and other pathologies because more eyes would be open to the absurdity of what was going on. So yes, delusion and self-deception have their function... in war as in no place else. So is a society in which PTSD is more prevalent actually "healthier" in that sense? Can we claim that only "sick" societies can handle war -- especially unjust war -- with equanimity? A respondent to Part I of this post comments as follows:

"...there are interesting ethnic-cultural differences as well. Among Vietnam veterans, the overall PTSD rate is about 16%, I think, but among Japanese-American veterans it is a damning 2%. One of my students... did an extremely interesting dissertation on PTDS among Hopi Vietnam veterans. In an exhaustive study of Hopis living on the reservation, he found a PTSD rate of 87%, not surprising in view of the pacific traditions of Hopi; but, even more interestingly, those who had been through tribal initiation or purification rituals were protected, so they were functioning at a very high level given their diagnosis."

Why "damning" for Japanese-American Vietnam veterans? Were they "hardened" to war because of their early environment? Unlikely. (If anything, you would expect greater sensitivity because of family stories about the internment camps.) Was it, then, a matter of culturally-conditioned attitudes toward violence and death? Possibly. Was it a matter of culturally-conditioned attitudes toward the sufferings of people not in their racial/ethnic group? Much more likely, in my opinion. This is an almost universal human trait, in fact -- the tendency and ability to objectify or "thing" people of a different sort -- to consider them less than human, and hence to have little or no concern for their sufferings. This was certainly an attitude encouraged by the people who designed the Nazi death camp system, and much of the training and propaganda of that time -- starting at a young age with the Hitler Youth -- was aimed at achieving those attitudes, and hence more efficient death machine operations. Who wants a concentration camp guard with a conscience, after all? The Hopis, on the other hand, might be considered the most mentally healthy culture of all since they react most strongly to exposure to violence -- but ironically, the mentally healthy culture yields up more trauma cases, albeit there are mechanisms in that society (if not in American society in general) to help people cope.

So yes, cultural background and training have a big role to play. But the biggest part of cultural background is still the meaning one attaches to experiences, as well as to concepts, ideas -- even (or especially) words. The Bush administration has perfected the art of pulling the right verbal and conceptual strings, pushing the right buttons, and ringing the right chimes to keep the bulk of the American people and their leaders "on board" when it comes to the war in Iraq. The appeal is to positive personal qualities, like courage and persistence, but even more to the rejection of negative personal qualities -- not "cutting and running", not chickening out, not appeasing, not backing down, etc. So the entire enterprise starts to look like some sort of barroom brawl that spills onto the street on a Saturday night, with neither side willing to be sensible and give it up. So the American people are led around by a verbal ring in their noses -- and those doing the leading don't believe that BS any more than they believe in the tooth fairy. But it's somehow enough to get people to march off to war -- which implies that most people, most of the time, are just waiting for an excuse to either start a fight or jump into one; and I think that this is, in a sense, completely true, and explains a lot about why we persist in even the most demostrably futile military campaigns.

The problem, however, with "meaning lite" is that it doesn't provide real nourishment -- it doesn't stick to the ribs when the chips are down. So a guy goes over to Iraq... what happens happens... and all the crap coming out of Washington about "staying the course" starts to look like what it is -- a massive lie. And the war starts to look like what it is -- a massive hoax. And there's nothing like seeing, first hand, that nearly everything America does overseas makes things worse for the people who live there. "We come in peace." But then civil war immediately breaks out, accompanied by increased terrorism, infrastructure breakdown, shortages, disease, hunger... the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to follow on the very heels of our invading forces, and no, they do not "rotate" out. We were supposed to be received as liberators, and crowned with laurels, and instead are confined to Green Zones and made the target of potshots everywhere we go. And of course we forget Rule Number One when it comes to "regime change" -- the attitude that "he may be a cruel, tyrannical dictator, but he's _our_ cruel, tyrannical dictator". No one wants their country occupied by anyone, for any reason, period. Sure, you can bribe a few collaborators and hacks, but the people will seethe with resentment, and they will never change their minds (as witness attitudes toward our continued occupation of Korea after -- what? -- fifty-plus years).

So, seeing all this, the dark clouds of absurdity and despair start to gather... and the kid from Kansas looks at his hunting rifle with a strange sense of longing. Maybe it's time to end all of this. But if he succeeds, there should be murder charges filed against certain personages a thousand miles to the east.