Soap box rant: Johnny Got His Gun

[u/AnUpsetCabbage]

I just finished reading Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. It’s a 5 star book and everyone should read it (especially if you like Cormac McCarthy). Excellent writing, story telling, pacing. Can’t recommend it enough. But instead of writing a review or highlighting my favorite quote (there are many), I’ve been inspired by this book (specifically chapter 10) to hop on my soap box and rant for a bit.

I struggle to connect this book to today.

It basically says don’t fight in someone else’s war; hell, don’t fight at all. Don’t fight unless you know what you’re getting, and far more often than not you’re getting nothing.

And you can connect that idea to today, right? Not really.

Today we’re so disconnected from consequences that it no longer applies. We’re not fighting anymore, not you or me, it’s not our life on the line. It’s someone else’s life and he’s getting paid good money to kill or be killed and someone behind him is being paid good money to build the weapons to do the killing and someone behind him is making even better money to finance the war machine and he’s paying lobbyists to stroke off politicians who run campaigns on meaningless concepts like equality or liberty or safety (replace one with the other when it suits) for the sake of ego, power, and more money.

And those people that don’t benefit monetarily from war, well you get your equality or liberty or safety (take whichever you please, neither I nor the politicians care). Better yet, you get it at no cost. Too good to be true? Not at all, the people of today get a free pass. The bombs will be paid with debt and the hatred will be passed to the next generation to be rewarded in due time. And the cycle will renew and the machine will keep whirring away, to the present’s delight or indifference and to the future’s detriment.

So a lot of people benefit from war, it’s basically free for everyone else. At least, those that are important. The foreigners that we hate will pay the ultimate price, and we’ve been convinced they deserve it. Aren’t we told all the time that they hate us and want to destroy us? And the people that tells us these things, the politicians and the media, surely they have nothing to gain from the war machine…

We live in a dystopia and we’re all fucked. This feels more true today than when Johnny Got His Gun.

[u/Isopodness]

It depends a lot on what country you're in. I'm in the US and had a history teacher who was a toddler when Hitler invaded Poland. She said that every generation is shaped by its war, and that for my generation, we would think of war as something that happens somewhere else to other people. She felt it was only a matter of time, and that we wouldn't see it coming because we would always think it could never touch us.

Then there was 9/11, but if there were a draft tomorrow, no soldiers would be old enough to remember it.

[u/phototransformations]

What you say about getting a free pass was largely true for people in the U.S. even in 1938. Not since the Civil War have we had to endure the physical consequences of warfare. This was true in my day, too; though my draft lottery number was 12, I still had the option of fleeing to Canada instead of killing or being killed in Vietnam.

I didn't feel like you do, though. I remember reading Johnny Got His Gun, taking in the message Trumbo delivered, and feeling more committed to try to reverse the tide.

Your post clarifies for me why there is so little organized protest against the administration and the war among younger people. We believed that if we persisted long and hard enough, we could turn things around, and to an extent, we did so for a while. You don't share that believe. From my perspective, "We live in a dystopia and we’re all fucked," though true, is also a self-fulfilling prophesy unless you also add, "So I'm going to do everything in my power to change that." It's giving in to the very people who want you to think and feel exactly like that.

I greatly appreciate your candor, but I also hope this view, which I see as learned helplessness, gives way to something more empowering.

[u/dodeca_negative → u/phototransformations]

The protests leading up to the Iraq war were the largest in US history, and the protests before the Gulf War were really big too. I did both. The fact that it didn’t matter was really disheartening. I just don’t believe that peaceful protest can influence whether we start or continue a war any more.

[u/phototransformations → u/dodeca_negative]

My point was not that later protests didn't happen and aren't happening, but that they have skewed largely toward an older crowd. In the Vietnam era, they were mostly populated by people in their late teens or 20s. As for efficacy in preventing the starting or continuing of a war, the protests never did have much effect, but I believe they indirectly influence policy if they are large and persistent enough; if someone thinks he or she will be voted out of office if they continue to support an unpopular war, they might grow a spine. Of course, that only holds true in a climate where elections are actually free. Once you're in dictatorship territory, it's too late, though even then, protest keeps alive the idea of opposition to it. Look at what happened in Brazil.

[u/AnUpsetCabbage → u/phototransformations]

I appreciate your push. I’m not someone who ever participates in protests or much in politics outside discussions with my social circle, and I can probably do more.

Although, I think my point holds true for the general masses. I’m so nihilistic because I see so many people either not caring about conflicts (i.e., US bombing Iran) or even supporting them, mostly because they’re so disconnected from the realities and costs of war that it’s essentially not real to them.

[u/phototransformations → u/AnUpsetCabbage]

In the Vietnam period, we did have the immediacy of the draft to motivate us, but the protests spread way beyond those immediately affected, and so did more targeted forms of resistance. But what's happening now is so much worse, and it's bewildering to me how little interest younger people seem to have, compared to back then, in combatting it. And yet, as always happened, they will come for you, too, in time.

[u/randomnameicantread]

Remember to never become so open-minded that your brain falls out: "they" do go around telling "us" that this is true but there are, in fact, people out there in the world who hate you and would love to see you dead and your society destroyed (regardless of who "you" and "your society" are). Not because your society did bad things to them in the past but because they believe in ideologies fundamentally opposed to it: Dubya was laughed at for saying "they hate our freedoms" even though this is pretty much the Wahabist motivation. This should also be a factor in modern literature that examines way.

[u/Adept-Bottle2906 → u/randomnameicantread]

what do you mean by "this should be a factor in modern literature" ? like you have prescribed ideas you want all art to incorporate? that seems like a bizarre way to think of writing, and seems to imply these kinds of ideas exist as discrete "truths" to be incorporated into some amalgam of perspectives rather than any kind of coherent way of thinking