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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChris Hedges: Killing Ragheads for Jesus
from truthdig
by Chris Hedges
American Sniper lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. societythe 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. Many Americans, especially white Americans trapped in a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional political system, yearn for the supposed moral renewal and rigid, militarized control the movie venerates. These passions, if realized, will extinguish what is left of our now-anemic open society.
The movie opens with a father and his young son hunting a deer. The boy shoots the animal, drops his rifle and runs to see his kill.
Get back here, his father yells. You dont ever leave your rifle in the dirt.
Yes, sir, the boy answers.
That was a helluva shot, son, the father says. You got a gift. You gonna make a fine hunter some day.
The camera cuts to a church interior where a congregation of white Christiansblacks appear in this film as often as in a Woody Allen movieare listening to a sermon about Gods plan for American Christians. The films title character, based on Chris Kyle, who would become the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history, will, it appears from the sermon, be called upon by God to use his gift to kill evildoers. The scene shifts to the Kyle family dining room table as the father intones in a Texas twang: There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe evil doesnt exist in the world. And if it ever darkened their doorstep they wouldnt know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep. And then you got predators.
.......(snip).......
Kyle insisted that every person he shot deserved to die. His inability to be self-reflective allowed him to deny the fact that during the U.S. occupation many, many innocent Iraqis were killed, including some shot by snipers. Snipers are used primarily to sow terror and fear among enemy combatants. And in his denial of reality, something former slaveholders and former Nazis perfected to an art after overseeing their own atrocities, Kyle was able to cling to childish myth rather than examine the darkness of his own soul and his contribution to the war crimes we carried out in Iraq. He justified his killing with a cloying sentimentality about his family, his Christian faith, his fellow SEALs and his nation. But sentimentality is not love. It is not empathy. It is, at its core, about self-pity and self-adulation. That the film, like the book, swings between cruelty and sentimentality is not accidental.
.......(snip).......
The culture of war banishes the capacity for pity. It glorifies self-sacrifice and death. It sees pain, ritual humiliation and violence as part of an initiation into manhood. Brutal hazing, as Kyle noted in his book, was an integral part of becoming a Navy SEAL. New SEALs would be held down and choked by senior members of the platoon until they passed out. The culture of war idealizes only the warrior. It belittles those who do not exhibit the warriors manly virtues. It places a premium on obedience and loyalty. It punishes those who engage in independent thought and demands total conformity. It elevates cruelty and killing to a virtue. This culture, once it infects wider society, destroys all that makes the heights of human civilization and democracy possible. The capacity for empathy, the cultivation of wisdom and understanding, the tolerance and respect for difference and even love are ruthlessly crushed. The innate barbarity that war and violence breed is justified by a saccharine sentimentality about the nation, the flag and a perverted Christianity that blesses its armed crusaders. This sentimentality, as Baldwin wrote, masks a terrifying numbness. It fosters an unchecked narcissism. Facts and historical truths, when they do not fit into the mythic vision of the nation and the tribe, are discarded. Dissent becomes treason. All opponents are godless and subhuman. American Sniper caters to a deep sickness rippling through our society. It holds up the dangerous belief that we can recover our equilibrium and our lost glory by embracing an American fascism. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/killing_ragheads_for_jesus_20150125
LynnTTT
(362 posts)I thank Hedges for articulating my horror over the love of this film. I live in a senior community in South Carolina. A 92 year old woman friend went to see the movie. I asked "Haven't you said you hate those loud war movies?" And of course she said this was different, because it's all about a true American hero. I told someone else who asked why I didn't go, "Sorry, I can be very patriotic without watching a movie that glorifies a sniper over the actions of any other soldier".
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)not easy though. It's usually pretty depressing fare.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Kyle was given the nickname Legend. He got a tattoo of a Crusader cross on his arm. I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages Id been fighting, he wrote. I always will. Following a day of sniping, after killing perhaps as many as six people, he would go back to his barracks to spent his time smoking Cuban Romeo y Julieta No. 3 cigars and playing video games, watching porn and working out. On leave, something omitted in the movie, he was frequently arrested for drunken bar fights. He dismissed politicians, hated the press and disdained superior officers, exalting only the comradeship of warriors. His memoir glorifies white, Christian supremacy and war. It is an angry tirade directed against anyone who questions the militarys elite, professional killers.
For some reason, a lot of people back homenot all peopledidnt accept that we were at war, he wrote. They didnt accept that war means death, violent death, most times. A lot of people, not just politicians, wanted to impose ridiculous fantasies on us, hold us to some standard of behavior that no human being could maintain.
Paladin
(28,272 posts)Thanks for posting.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)between the mindset of this man / movie, and the jihadist terrorists. They are mirror images of each other. That is ironic and tragic, and I don't think that it's just accidental coincidence.
I can't prove it, but I would bet my bottom dollar that both are being created by one group of very wealthy puppetmaster beneficiaries of it all. Until those people are stopped, nothing on either side will change.
RadiationTherapy
(5,818 posts)and blaming of class, culture, and education to ring hollow as he puts Kyle's religion at the forefront of this critique.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)RadiationTherapy
(5,818 posts)and excuses islam as a motivation. With Kyle, he ignores class and education and blames his religion. I don't trust Hedges' opinion on these matters. Hitchens exposed him in their debate, as far as I am concerned.
rafeh1
(385 posts)Underlying american sniper is not the veneration of Jesus as god but rather the fascists state
see my post on how Mr Kelly got his high score.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026139131