never gonna get it

why.. WHY are we so stupid? and I don’t mean in the eating ice cream in lieu of dinner way (current event), but in the going to war way, the killing of others way, the intentional destruction of life sort of way.

I just watched a segment on the History Channel about the flag raisers of Iwo Jima. And it gave me a renewed sense of why we watch such garbage on tv: because it’s 1, easy and 2, entertaining in that feel-good way. Easy on the brain, easy on the eyes, easy on the emotions, if you will. Kind of like the surfeit of ice cream I’m eating right now, except on the tongue, not the eyes.

I almost changed the channel to “America’s Next Top Model” because it was just so damn sad to see footage of those men – no, those boys – being killed so brutally. I don’t know why it hit me hard tonight as opposed to other times I’ve seen similar footage. And it’s a different effect than a movie, because even then, you know it’s not real, even if based on real events.

But then I thought to myself, my god, look at what these marines had to go through, to live through, to fight through, and all I have to do is watch it. My god, my god, if my lazy ass can do anything, I can sit through an hour of this narrated history that so many had to actually live out (noted also that I did sit through about … 15 hours of football between yesterday and today).

But it made me sad. And mad that we let war happen, over and over again, throughout history. We never learn. Robbing lives from boys who haven’t had the chance yet to go to college or to get married or maybe even to get laid for the first time. And that’s kind of funny but really just very sad because that’s what life should be – experiencing good things – when, for them, life ended with and among and because of really bad things. Not to mention the mothers. The fathers too, but for some reason it’s the mothers who really hit you, who you know had such hopes and aspirations for sons who otherwise had the whole world in front of them. And died instead.

I’m glad I watched it. I’m reminded that, though clichéd, freedom is not, in fact, free (and there are too many graves to prove it). And that’s never really been so apparent to me as it is now, as I realize that North Korea or Iran, among others, could nuke us any day now, and we could break out in a world war again and be stripped of freedom, which is, of course, a freedom to live without an overarching daily fear of death.

But, to be sure, life has had an overarching feeling of frustration for me lately. It just all seems so vain, so purposeless; I swear sometimes, most times, even when good, I just don’t get it.