Randomly surfing today while I’m doing some writing, and a tripped over ‘ MY WAR – Fear And Loathing In Iraq‘ by milblogger ‘CBFTW.’
First of all, it’s a damn good blog – whoever this guy is, he’s a helluva writer. He conveys the immediacy, determination, and frustration he writes about incredibly well.
Other bloggers have pointed to him, so he’s only a discovery to me (if you haven’t been there yet, click on over and read a bit, you’ll be glad you did). But aside from discovering a good blog and a good writer, this kicked off an interesting round of thinking in me.
I’ve been wrestling for a while with a post on the ‘two Americas’ cliche. Yes, it’s a cliche, but sometimes cliches exist because they are true. I’m going up to West Los Angeles pretty much every day from my suburban home, and I really do see a huge cultural gap between the well-off residents of Brentwood, Venice and Santa Monica (my old haunts) and the South Bay, where I live now.I’ve written a bit about it before:
…I was having a late-night dinner at a terrible Italian restaurant in Long Beach, CA (wow, too awful to even allow me to remember the name), and the only other party was a group of “modern-Okie” aerospace workers … badly dressed, overweight, uncultured (they were talking excitedly about ‘The Bachelor’). The dads (two couples w/multiple kids) were apparently in the aerospace industry, and I had a jolt of realization … these were the families that built the airplanes that I fly around in, and millions of families like them build our houses, buildings, sewers, provide water and electricity, etc. etc. And I began to look at my own attitudes and wonder just why the hell I felt permission to look amusedly at them, and to wonder for a moment which team I was on, and which one I wanted to be on.
and in getting connected with all the amazing people in the military I’ve met through Spirit of America, most of them definitely were not on the same side of the cultural divide as my friends in Venice Beach.
CBFTW is.
Interests
* drinking
* skateboarding
* reading
* music
* anti social behavior
* film
* culture
* politics
* San Francisco
* 80’s music
* Charles Bukowski
* whiskey
* Military History
* cult movies
* photography
* art
* punk rock
* abandoned buildings
* Your Mom
* dive barsFavorite Movies
* Taxi Driver
* Swingers
* Say Anything
* Reality Bites
* Pretty In Pink
* Clerks
* Full Metal Jacket
* Breakfast Club
* Dirty Harry
* The Warriors
* Falling Down
* Texas Chainsaw Massacre
* Beat Girl
* Cape Fear
* Chopper
* Reservoir Dogs
* Pulp Fiction
* True Romance
* Barfly
* Apocalypse NowFavorite Music
* JAZZ
* Blues
* punk
* harcore
* metal
* alternative
* grunge
* SLAYER
* 80’s music
* classic rock
* classical
* Social Distortion
* Rockabilly
* Sinatra
* Big Band
* everything.Favorite Books
* Love is A Mad Dog From Hell
* Ham On Rye
* Catcher In The Rye
* On The Road
* Hells Angels
* Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas
* Steal This Book
* Anarchist Cookbook
* The Killer Inside Me
* Army Training Manuals and Field Manuals
* Ranger Handbook
* Jack Kerouac
* Hunter S. Thompson
* Hemmingway
* Naked Lunch
* James Ellroy
Here’s a guy as comfortable as I am hanging out at Skylight Books or searching for an old Social Distortion live album.
Maybe – just maybe – there are a lot of us trapped at the boundary between the two cultures. Maybe it’s the old guys like me who are so polarized, and many of the younger cohorts just don’t worry about it as much as we do.
That’d be good news.
More good news in the form of the response of his chain of command on discovering his blog.
He calmly looked up and told me that my shit was really good, and he liked reading my stuff, and that I was a good writer. He even mentioned something about including it in the units history and archives. That didn’t relieve me one bit, like I said, it made me more freaked out. I’m waiting for him to say the word: “BUT” followed by my punishment. Then we discussed things, and he pointed things out, and told me things. I agreed with 100% of everything he was saying, and the final conclusion from what he told me was that I could continue writing, but maybe have my Plt Sgt read my stuff before I post. He stressed that he didn’t want to censor me and that I still had the freedom of speech thing, as long as I wasn’t doing anything that would endanger the mission. I totally 110% agree with him on that one. I thanked him and I told him that I of course would not want to do anything that would endanger anybody here or back home, which is of course true. He suggested that I should look into getting this stuff published and made into a book someday.
Yes, the military continues to impress me.
Haven’t you heard about Purple America? I think the “South Park Republican” would be purple as well.
This is sort of related – not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I did collect a lot of posts on people who voted for Goore in 2000 who are going to vote for Bush this year. They have either always refused to be politically pigeonholed (like me) or they majorly re-evaluated after 9-11.
Maybe it’s the old guys like me who are so polarized, and many of the younger cohorts just don’t worry about it as much as we do.
I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I still count as “young,” but there’s a substantial divide between the high-school kids I hanging out with at MEPS on Tuesday and the ones I went to school with 10 years ago.
And there’s a real divide between the trendy, well-off clubbers I know from law school and the guys I meet in the woods during turkey season.
In both cases, I’m something of an exotic animal to all parties–law students have never met a hunter, hunters and enlistees have never met a law student.
Maybe I’m just in a weird place in life so things look extreme to me, but as a guy with a foot in at least two (and maybe more) different worlds, I’m always depressed by the lack of tolerance and judgmentalism that I see all around. This is doubly true when it is the educated liberals who are the more intolerant of my acquaintances.
Not sure what these observations mean, but I’m hesitant to endorse the notion that things are getting less polarized amoung the younger set.
My little brother is getting a good look at the cultural divide right now. He’s spent the last two years at UNC-Chapel Hill. His grades are suffering now, though, more from lack of motivation than anything else (He almost maxed his SATs, so it’s not lack of brains). So, he’s decided to enlist in the USMC and reports to Parris Island on November 1st.
He has some pretty funny stories about the guys and gals who are enlisting these days, though. He met one gorgeous woman in her late twenties who was the manager of a bank, then suddenly quit her job and enlisted in the Marines. All of her friends think she has completely lost her mind. Quite a few college kids are enlisting, just like my bro. Their almost always upper-middle/upper-class parents are usually upset, telling their sons/daughters “The Marines? Don’t throw your life away on that, you’re too good for the military”. Other parents try to make it political, as in “You’re a young ignorant fool, you’re just going to get yourself killed for Haliburton’s oil profits and that liar Bush”. On the other hand, my brother has met quite a few guys from used to be called ‘the wrong side of the tracks’. Although they may be rude, crude and not very educated, they are plenty tough and determined to serve their country and the Marine Corps. All kinds of kids from all across the social spectrum are joining the military these days, which definitely makes me wonder what the hell the class warfare folks (ie. “We need a draft to keep the military from being totally lower-class”) are on.
As for my brother, he feels kind of torn, just like the writer above. He spent his youth hunting and fishing, just like me, growing up in a tiny town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. However, both of my parents are college grads and the house has always been filled with books of every description, so my brother really feels like he has a ‘foot in both worlds’, as the saying goes.
Personally, I think people like my brother are a lot more common than the conventional wisdom would dictate. The urge to stereotype is strong in the human race and this is just another example of that tendency. . .
I like to party with outlaw bikers and discuss physics with physicists. Art history with artists. etc.
I live modestly (very) with a mate and 3 children at home.
Plus I turn 60 in about two months. I used to believe in two Americas until I found out that in the bottom 20% – 60% own a house. So the problem (if there is one) is not lack of housing, but lack of quality. No swimming pool.
I’m at home in my skin.
It is easy to get in the money ghetto and forget that the people who build the stuff I design are as competent in their work as I am in mine.
It is truly a wonderful country.
Plus “Naked Lunch” is free on line.
My favorite chapter is ISLAM INCORPORATED AND THE PARTIES OF INTERZONE
http://www.geocities.com/dr_benway_tangier/page125.html