Actually, I was a rather shitty soldier. Just ask Sergeant White who sent me to “rocket city” Song Be. Or Colonel Hayden who received the Silver Star after our MACV had been destroyed. And this son of a bitch wasn’t even there! Or at least that was the general consensus.
K: Prom, have you killed before?
I for one hope, pray in fact that killing another human being does cause
one to be “fractured and fragmented”…if not, then that person is a
true “psychopath”… killing another human being should be hard and gut
wrenching and bring about questions of good and evil…
I am a good person, and yet, I killed… so am I good or am I bad/evil?
if killing is wrong, as suggested in the bible, Thou shall not kill…
and we have laws forbidding the act of killing/murder…
so how would I be able to justify this act of killing/murder?
if that doesn’t cause one to become “fractured and fragmented” what will?
personally, I haven’ killed and I hope to the end of my days, I never have to kill…
because what does it say about me that I have killed?
nothing good I am sure…
K: I guess I have to spell this one out… good and evil are personal, subjective opinions,
however, if one is drafted and then kill, as IAM has done, I think, it doesn’t matter
what one’s personal subjective opinion is…you are suppose to kill in the name of
the state… and suddenly the act of murder/killing is somehow, never explained
how, but is somehow forgiven…the state is forcing you to act against your own
personal, subjective beliefs… that killing is wrong…
so, who are we listening to? the state and its demands that we obey its
orders including the act of killing/murder or do we hold to our own personal
believes/opinions that murder/killing is wrong…
so what principle do you follow? at the very heart of this concept of
good and evil lies this understanding of murder/killing…
is it wrong to murder/kill or is it acceptable given society has “OK” our actions of
killing/murder? thus leading one to a “fractured and fragmented” soul…
for you are torn between a possible good/rights and a possible wrongs/evil…
when is the act of murder/killing justified? if the state “allows” it?
many forests have died in this discussion of the justification of murder/killing…
That’s why people dodged the draft or went to jail.
But once you decided to go into the army, you have also decided that killing people is personally preferable to jail or the other alternatives.
Sure, you might change your mind once you are in the thick of it. But then you have other alternatives. Which might not be pleasant but they are there.
However, there are dark sides , and it comes alongside Capital’s shaded disinterest for human life as value.
Trump’s and others’s suspected deferral for minimal or non existent disability for deferral from the then existant draft became primae facea examples of the economic basis of emergent political inequality.
This may have become a formulated unfortunate aspect of civilizational discontent, other than based on those mostly evolutionary principles
In other words, the reason I don’t have my medals anymore is because I tossed them at a demonstration in Washington. By then I was just another “Vietnam Veteran Against the War”. Just not born on the Fourth of July.
Only, as I suggested to my latest Stooge, Aventador – Curly-Joe – above, why don’t you and I actually explore human identity in regard to things like the Vietnam War. Philosophically say.
Give this a read and note the extent to which your own sense of self is described or not described here.