It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 30: Chapter X

Coarse and Offensive and Xenophobic Language. Descriptions of Suicide. Reader Discretion Advised.

But change, inevitable, was coming!

The stench of chemical defoliant, wafting from the jungle in the East, permeated the nightly news. So too did the parade of staggering boy-men returning home, eyes sunken and glazed, witnesses of Hell, who weren't sure if they were better off alive or dead. And the people of American, of Mother-City, of St. Gregory's, who had been so eager to send them off, weren't all that sure now if they wanted the soldiers back.

War is barbaric, but it is a prerequisite of human culture, of the human psyche. That is, a good and righteous war against an enemy of uncharacteristic brutality and inhumanity. Human culture is made to be binary, constructed around the notions of heroes and villains, good and evil. Whoever 'we' are, 'we' support the hero, 'we' would be the hero given the chance, while the villain, 'them', is always foreign. The villain is always an Intruder on 'our' idyllic way of life. 'They' are morally corrupt, devoid of compassion, and it is 'our' solemn duty to send 'them' back from the Hell whence they were spawned. If society is to thrive, then evil must not be allowed to fester and procreate. It must be hunted, and pitilessly dealt with.

But what happens if you're not sure who the villain is? What does it do to your superior culture if, as a whole, you can't shake the nagging feeling that you are the compassionless monsters that stalk anguished dreams? What does it do to your image of self, when you can't help but wonder if it is 'your' society that has lost its humanity?

It was a funny little conflict. It came upon the world like a sudden tsunami. No one not paid to prepare for such catastrophes was ready for it, and those that were paid simply thought it a good idea to drive the ship directly at the charging wave.

It had something to do with the French. It was something...something...who the fuck knew? Empires, was it? But empires were long gone, and so were the French...

But America would not leave!

America would stay the course!

But...why?

As romantic settings for a good war go, Asians jungles don't top the list. They weren't the rustic forests of Belgium, and certainly not the French beaches with those high, stately cliffs. The villains, too, did not abide by conventional wisdom. They were not madmen, who captivated and entrapped whole peoples with their frenzied visions of a subjugated world. The villains of this story wore funny hats and flowing pants, and if that wasn't confusing enough, they modeled themselves after the ideals of the West.

American ideals!

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

And that's what all people should have, shouldn't they?

If it was enough for saintly, benevolent Washington, then why couldn't Uncle Ho have it too?

The war, said America, is not between us and the little, yellow man. They are but a battlefield, and Ho Chi Min a puppet. See the big picture, why don't you? See the Soviet machinations behind the curtain, encroaching everywhere on our ideals for a Western Utopia. Fight! Fight the evils of Communism. Fight for righteousness! Fight for all we have and hold dear! Fight to the death, for there will only be death left if we fail!

And fight those boys did! Bloody step by bloody step for inconsequential inches of number hills long forsaken by those who knew better.

But where were the flat and Slavic faces looking out from behind the banana trees? When they burned the huts, and gassed the villages and towns, where were the Russians fleeing from under the bed? Why did the viewers back home only see themselves at the points of their sons' guns, those shoeless, uncivilized insurgents, with the same firebrand beliefs in the righteousness of their country's cause for freedom that had spurred thirteen colonies of patriots to throw off the yoke of imperial rule? Shouldn't America's fighting forces be on the side of the right to self-determination, whatever the self determines, unencumbered by any foreign intervention?