With all the poise of a cannonball

I have been reading a book of short stories by James Tiptree, Jr., aka Alice Bradley Sheldon, science fiction author and gender-bender extraordinaire, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Tiptree included gendered themes in most of her stories, and its got me thinking about this idea that women are innately less violent than men.

Also, it was just memorial day last Monday, and I have been watching the first couple seasons of Battle Star Galactica, which has introduced me to the indomitable Kara Thrace. I'm not sure I will be able to finish watching BSG, I'm that in love with Thrace, and the President, and all the other women in that show who love to fight. Seeing such a positive portrayal of war, and particularly female soldiers, just about breaks my heart with the desire to be a soldier.

Its crazy, I am aware of that. I hated the Army when I was enlisted, I hated being ordered about by incompetent people half as smart as I was, and even if I was completely physically fit there are a dozen other reasons why I could never join the military again, starting with my disgust for the war criminals at the top of the chain of command and working out from there. Nevertheless, there is this tug on my heart that is hard to explain. I want to fight.

The human urge to destroy is discouraged in women, we are supposed to be nurturers and care-givers and all that, but I don't believe that this is a biological fact. Were the social pressures reversed, I am convinced that women could be-and are- just as vicious and destructive and violent as men are supposed to be. No one human is immune from the desire to kill.

So, as compelling and interesting as Tiptree's stories are, the Memorial Day piece (or piece that I read on Memorial Day anyway) that made the biggest impression on me was this article from 2 Dinar, The Casualties of War:

In reality, I was, and remain, wracked with guilt and insecurity- different than survivor’s guilt and far less noble. This is the guilt of leaving to pursue another career when the Corps needed strong leaders like me. The guilt of not having gone all-in when gambling with my life; of not having been catastrophically injured. The guilt of not having killed and the guilt of not living with the timeless veteran’s regrets about his killings. The guilt of being indifferent to the hundreds of opportunities available to me because they all bored me and all I wanted to do was fight.

War is a powerful thing, sweet and compelling. I'm not sure why- I have a dozen theories, about population pressures and sin, ecological change that spurs migration and religious stereotyping- but the fact remains. In spite of everything I know about how life ought to be, sometimes what I really want is a situation where I can get away with starting a fight.

Jericho's second season

The first season of Jericho was OK. I sat down and watched it at one point a few months ago when I was bored and ill and up all night and it was the only TV show I could find that had a whole season's worth of episodes available online for free. I really liked some aspects of it, particularly the post-apocalyptic themes and the secret agent storyline, and I could listen to the guy who plays Hawkins talk all day and not get bored; he has the most wonderful voice. Other aspects were kind of annoying, like how none of the women were good for anything, and how the town kept "running out" of gasoline and then the next episode people were driving all over the place, and the resemblance some of the plot points had to a 9/11 Truther conspiracy theory.

The first few episodes of the second season have been pretty stellar, though. Apparently the show isn't that popular, but I think it's great. Popularity isn't necessarily the defining factor when you're telling a good story, and like Kung Fu Monkey says, this show has become radically subversive. I just watched Episode Five, and it reminded me of nothing so much as a composite of certain incidents from the Iraq war. The incident in Fallujah, before we burned it to the ground, where those contractors went into the city and were killed, and their bodies were mutilated and strung up by a mob. Numerous incidents of corruption during the reconstruction. Arbitrary imprisonment of occupied citizens without trial, and "misunderstandings" that resulted in the death of innocent children in their homes. The major difference is that the victims of corporate-government oppression here aren't Iraqis, they're Americans. The pretty little girl who gets shot is blond, and the men who string up the contractor are American farm boys, doing what anyone would do in their situation.

The most dangerous threat to the impulse to war is sympathizing with the enemy. Empathy, I am convinced, is the root of morality. If you can imagine yourself as the person you oppose, if you can feel what they feel , if you can truly know them, war becomes impossible. When it comes to people who live halfway across the world, who speak a different language and pray to a different God, empathy isn't that easy. Stories like this help bridge the gap, and we need more like it.

You can watch all of season two of Jericho here, on CBS' page, free and completely legit.