The Extinction Of The Admirable Soldier
Sometimes PTSD is essential.
Remember when Buster joins the army in ‘Arrested Development’, and he starts killing people with drone strikes? He thinks he is playing a video game. To have a comfortable seat, perhaps a cup of tea, and the ability to press a button that kills thousands of people halfway across the world? Man, that is our reality. All that shit about how you don’t play at war, well now you do. War is a video game.
Great soldiers can act like robots. Yea, they can motivate, inspire, and think on their feet in the heat of a battle, but the fortitude to follow commands allows them to climb the ladder. The problem is they are not robots. Back in the day, soldiers could shoot their enemy from fifty yards away. Keep stomping on that guilt throughout the war until the boot comes off when it is all over, and they survive. They try and give the same force with bare feet; some come together hoping that a combined effort will squash the past into nothing. The guilt rises like a wave, going from manageable puddles to an unavoidable drenching. Like that scene in Interstellar where they think they see mountains in the distance, but it turns out they are waves heading towards them. The astronauts, shin-deep in water, manage to escape via their ship, leaving one behind to drown. “Those aren’t mountains, their waves.” You can climb a mountain; you cannot surmount the ocean. There is no spaceship for soldiers. The wall of waves come towards them, and their post-war counselling is just an umbrella. They stand empty, a human turncoat awaiting the oncoming army of the dead.
In war, PTSD is nature asking you, “what the fuck do you think you are doing?” What happens when PTSD isn’t there? Not cured, none of this shit will be fixed, but what if it is never felt. What if pressing a button that kills thousands invokes the same level of guilt as not recycling your plastic bottle of water? Sucking on that plastic straw being a BAD BOI. Here, don’t show me a photo of a turtle, and I am sure I’ll be okay. What if this is what war will become? If it hasn’t already gotten to that apathetic paradise.
The less humane the act of war becomes, the more conflict there will be.
Watch Band Of Brothers. It is fantastic and all true events. One memorable scene comes when Germany has already surrendered. The German soldiers are given permission to address their men one last time. The hatred the Americans feel for the Germans is momentarily halted; they see themselves. Soldiers, missing their families, seeing their friends die, doing their job. A begrudged bond. This bond is at the heart of PTSD. Without it, what is stopping us?
Our freedom was fought for and secured decades ago. War is now a blank cheque book.
Cheers
https://youtu.be/VcMk85ZsBh0 The Band Of Brothers scene