Killing Ragheads for Jesus

[Balder]

Has anyone seen American Sniper?  I haven't yet -- and may never -- but Chris Hedges gives a pretty detailed (and scathing) summary of it here:

Killing Ragheads for Jesus

[Edward theurj Berge]

Yes, and I had a few blog posts on it which I'll copy and paste below.

The new movie American Sniper is getting a lot of grief for making a hero out of the real life person the movie is based on, not telling the other side of his pea brain racism and Islamophobia. Such is the hero myth, a very powerful one in our and many cultures.

See Maher's panel discussion of American Sniper. Part of the problem is this black or white worldview that see's either the great hero or the evil anti-hero. Btw, as one panelist noted, I did appreciate the film for its exploration of post traumatic stress disorder, and its portrayal of how war affects families back home.

From Hedge's review:

"American Sniper lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the 'lesser breeds' of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression."

[Edward theurj Berge]

Just wondering, don't we need this sort of psychopathic patriot to fight our wars, as long as we're going to have them? Can one be a bright, compassionate warrior a la Kung Fu? Or is that a myth too?

[andrew]

I just read somewhere that the lowest part of hell is reserved for those who advocate war and don't fight it personally themselves. 

Taibbi called it too stupid to talk about. 

Counterpunch mainly sees it as the psychological projections of terrified white men who are sworn to the master ethic and never the slave; similar to how Israel is sworn to the 'never again' ethos. One could engineer geopolitics around those two views. 

I see it within a larger context of social control by the puppet masters. Sports and entertainment being primary tools of propaganda. Most nations are now being hyper nationalized ; religion is once again being used as a tool of division; money the most primary method of control and divide; and the left /right polemic within nations being part of the same tactics. Sports and entertainment within these cultures are no longer benign and are tools of social control, social control, social control.

[andrew]

Well, not every country is buying into the reactive scripted hysteria of the puppet masters: 

http://www.tomdispatch.com