..this one's for killing, this one's for fun. It's a piggy jingle we sang in Army basic training. Most of the ditties we sang--with glee--were offensive to someone somewhere. I was offended plenty, but in the military "offense" is a personal problem and personal problems, 'cruit, you take to the chaplain, those nice ministerial majors in jump boots and invisible wings, soft voices with the answer to exactly nothing real. I opted out of firing my weapon in basic, women had that prerogative for a while, and I exercised that prerogative because what do you do with a gun but
kill something, drill sergeant --when I was asked and I was asked all the time. I was not good for morale, standing around in my superiority pants, scoring the other 'cruits targets. That's what we're here for, 'cruit. You're in the
army.You got to learn to take orders and kill someone before they kill you or worse kill your buddies. We're saving your
life, 'cruit. I eventually did fire when they lifted the exemption--it's unworkable to have opinions in the military--I qualified expert, not
sniper expert but you don't want to piss me off at twenty feet hahaha--and even now as I write that I can feel the thrill--sorry, it's a thrill--of being capable of downing someone who is attacking--of being able to
save people who were unarmed on
principle, thinking beautiful thoughts like, what do you do with a weapon but
kill something? I never was in combat and believe me for that I am thankful. But even in training we called the enemy names. Savages? Don't remember that but there were worse names I can't even bring myself to write. How can you kill someone who is a human being? You can't. You demonize them. You have to make them less than human. Savages. Worse. If you don't,
then you're a psycho. And like the American Sniper you come home and brag about it--why not--your, mine,
our-- unquenchable thirst for oil is what sent you there--it's not as if you woke up and said, "it's a good day to kill some Savages!" You're not psycho. You did our dirty work. You were sent off with flags waving and children crying from the high school auditorium and people cheering "bring us back our oil. We need it to power up these computers and run these generators so we can watch this crap on television 24 hours a day and talk about the shows as if they were real life"--I'm talking news shows too--when real life is what
you are walking into. Your mission is to pry the Savages' fingers off the oil pumps, hey, get them to
vote on it if you can. Smells better. If we couldn't get that oil, we'd be screaming for the pretty little Savages' heads. We're just lucky we still have the luxury of thinking beautiful self-righteous little thoughts like, what do you with a weapon but
kill something?
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