June 1, 2005 ~ Shame and Disgust, Revisited
Wednesday.
Apparently, my reaction to the nuclear propaganda reels was easily misunderstood. One reader took my mention of shame and disgust at watching one of the reels to mean that I was resolutely opposed to the use of the atomic bomb in World War II, and therefore opposed to the Allies winning the war.
The intricacy of my emotions on that issue would be too hard to put into words. World War II was far too complex to boil it down to such black and white stark answers.
No, what I was disgusted and ashamed by was the tone of that particular reel. In the interest of clarity, some further explanation, which I should have included in the first place. Quoting from my entry:
It bragged of how the bombs were detonated at a certain precise altitude to "maximize damage and casualties." It spoke of hundreds of thousands dead as if they weren't human, as if they were some sort of score to a sports game. They interviewed survivors, who spoke of the extreme suffering they had endured thanks to the bomb, and the announcer's emphasis was far from compassion; instead, he focused on how wonderful it is that the United States has the power to cause such extreme suffering. Dehumanizing. It was all so very dehumanizing.
At the end of the film, a US official stood on a bridge, outlining in chalk on the pavement below the shadow of a man who had disintegrated in the blast. The announcer spoke with no respect for the human being who had died on that spot, only pride in the military might that the United States had gained through nuclear weaponry, might that could disintegrate a human being so that only his shadow was left.
I think that any victor in any war who does not speak with gravity and respect for the consequences of their actions on other human lives, no matter what side those lives were aligned with, especially civilian lives, is worthy of shame. Someone who can look at the remains of a human and say not with gravity but with pride and boastfulness, "look at how far we have progressed," should be ashamed. To listen to a survivor and have not an ounce of compassion but instead keep bragging about our wonderful technology, it is disgusting to me.
I cried watching that reel not because it had happened, but because they were so bloody arrogant and awful and downright xenophobic in the presentation.
I am talking about dehumanization. Dehumanization, ie: racism. The film literally talked about the Japanese as if they were not human, were not worthy of human status (and, therefore, their lives were not worth as much). That attitude is one of the things that bothered me the most, and it was one of the main things that I was ashamed to see in my country's history. Not that I didn't know it had been there, of course, but such a vivid reminder was hard to stomach. The sort of national identity that would cause that wide-sweeping racist and dehumanizing attitude is not the sort of history that I can ever be proud of.
Remember those pictures that came out months and months ago, of a mob attack on some US citizens in Iraq, where they pulled the burnt corpses from the vehicles, desecrated the bodies, hung them from the crossbeams on a bridge, all while smiling and laughing and celebrating? Those pictures sickened me in the exact same way.
As did the pictures of Lynndie England gloating and grinning over abused Iraqi prisoners.
As did the pictures of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the September 11th attacks.
Gloating and bragging and boasting about causing the death of another human being, let alone hundreds of thousands of human beings, that disgusts me. That ashames me.
Gravity is what I would hope for, not some gloating happy announcer ignoring the loss of life and blathering on about how wonderful our country is, how great our technology, when there's the ashes of a person, a crying survivor right there on the screen. And by God I hope that when Truman decided to drop those bombs, his only concern wasn't just the Americans in Japan who would be killed, but everyone who would die, children and soldiers. And the hope, desperate hope, that the killing would be over with that act, the dropping of those bombs. If those things were not in his mind, he would be very ill-suited to lead a war.
Oh no. I was not disgusted by the fact that the bombs were dropped. The complexity of my thoughts, reactions, and emotions on that issue are too varied and confused to put into words.
No, I was instead disgusted by the disrespect for human life promoted in that film and the promotion of thoughtless arrogance. That is the sort of patriotism and blind faith in country that I want no part in. If my country could not at that time face the massive loss of human life with the gravity it deserved, no matter if it was enemy lives or not, then I am ashamed and disgusted by my country's attitudes at the time, the attitudes shown in that video. Attitudes that, when repeated now in our modern conflicts and politics, shame me still.
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