The War

I've spent the day watching Ken Burns' The War documentary. Honestly, I was wondering if I should. My hoity-toity private liberal arts training tells me that it's popcorn history, just the bare bones of a greater story. And the reports on NPR say it's one sided and contoversial and frankly, I just didn't want to get involved in that. But. I started watching anyway and I'm glad I have because it's interesting to realize how little I knew about the war, how simplistic my understanding of things like the timeline have been, how I have this public school conception that D-Day ended the War and a lack of understanding as to how many died over how long. On the surface I know, I know the dates things took place and names of major battles and conception of both theatres. But at the same time, I had no idea. My grandfathers didn't talk about it. The one who might have had died before I was born.

It's fascinating. But it's depressing too, and not just because of what happened then, but because my generation doesn't have that quality. They call the WWII generation the "greatest" and I've always kind of rolled my eyes at that because... well, I'm not quite sure why. Probably because I saw it as it had always been described in the vague and short sentences my grandparents used: we did what we had to do. End of story. And maybe that in and of itself is the reason behind the title.

After September 11, people attempted to create similarities, tried to turn the civilian tragedy into Pearl Harbor, tried to make this a Just War, a necessary war. And perhaps, in some way shape or form, it could have been. The Afghan Front could have been the necessary destruction of a horrific regime that many people in many parts of the world believed should have never been allowed to rise in the first place (but did thanks to our country's mistakes). We could have been liberators, we could have done... something great. Maybe. And done it differently, done it inclusively, done it fairly. But the personal motivations of our leaders got in the way, the greed and hunger and maybe, for some, a misdirected notion of true concern (I'm trying to allow for a glimmer of good faith). And the war... well, we all know how that's been going.

We just don't have the national purpose or the leadership that our grandparents (great-grandparents?) had, though we desire it more than anything else. How could Bush be Roosevelt? Or Truman? Or even LBJ from a different era. Petraeus is nowhere near an Eisenhower or a Patton. We can't trust him and by and large we don't -- though, that doesn't mean we don't want to. Our current conflict, our "war" is now slipping into deep unpopularity, but the protests are primarily confined to electronic signatures and some outraged blogging. We're the ones who are watching and listening as our classmates, relatives, peers go off in the 'sandbox' and die -- or don't and wish they had. But the activity, the visual actions of defiance and protest are being done by our parents, by the children of the Vietnam Era.

Why?

Walt asked me this during one our long morning talks some months ago. Howard was there too. I said it's because we're so connected by electronics, by the Internet and email and text messaging and cell phones and all of that so as we're actually disconnected. Our way of networking is through facebook or myspace; we feel strongly about something so we join a group of people we've never and probably never will, from 'Students Against the War' to 'save Britney's panties.' We'll post once or twice in a discussion board or use our far-spectrum politics to goad someone of the opposing far spectrum into a written war of words that we'll forget about in a couple of days. I shrugged and I told my boss-friend and Howard that there is a movement, it's just electronic instead of visual. I told them that my generation is paying attention, we just don't know how to show that to anyone beyond ourselves.

But I think the reality is that we have a romanticized version of war. I think the reality is that a large part of us want to be at war.

Because what my generation is really looking for is meaning.

And we're not sure where or how to find it.

So we argue for and against the conflict using far right or far left ideologies not necessarily because we believe it (though some of us do) but because there's meaning in extremism. Extreme politics, extreme religion, or extreme lack thereof. We campaign for political candidates with vigor, but we still don't vote. We join online groups to show we're aware without really being connected. We get worked up over Burma and the Sudan, Republicanism and republicanism, right, left, Wallmart. Our teachers tell us that political participation is important, that signing petitions and letting our voice be heard is part of that. But what happens beyond it?

We're an interesting collection. We don't want to be put in boxes but fight to belong. We don't want to be lumped together but we want to be recognized. We don't want to be seen as selfish, but we're isolated and caught in our own heads.

As far as the war is concerned, some of us harbor the 'idealistic we're doing it for our country because it's what's right,' patriotic, hopeful version that sees this action as a crusade against injustice. And it's not something we pulled out of ourselves. Rather, it's an ideology we get from watching Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and The War and similar. Because we're a visual generation, because the movies are where we learn about ourselves. And this despite the attempts of these media to demonstrate the cold realities, the horrors of conflict. Instead, we end up envying the ability these people, these ordinary people, had to go into it all anyway. And we wish for the ability to feel that sort of connection, to feel that sense of purpose and reason, to feel that dedication to something.

And a lot of us wish for the simplicity that comes with that. Because this Greatest Generation had so much ahead of them. There was so much for them to do, so much for them to change, and they were prepared for it, ready to take it on, strong to do so.

But for us, the big stuff has been overcome. The Women's Movement, the Civil Rights Movement... spearheaded by the generations before it has, for all intents and purposes, been done. The small stuff is left. The pockets of injustice, the 80 cents to the dollar. Consequently, in a lot of ways I think we take the small stuff and try to blow it up just enough so we can feel like there's something left.

It's ironic. You watch the documentaries, read the books, and those involved always say they did it for their children. And yet their children sigh and ask, now what?

The American Spirit is built upon overcoming obstacles. It's ground into us, this hardy belief that we need to achieve more, be more, grow more, do more than the generation before us because that's how it's always been. And we crave it, but we're standing around in our electronic world and asking 'what're we going to do?'

My generation has spent its formidable years plodding through political times of mediocre leaders. While we were in High School we watched perhaps the last one be torn to pieces over something ridiculous, and since... there hasn't been much. Even our Great Hopes, the possibilities, get caught up in the political game. They start out as something new and then slowly turn into this indistinguishable cardboard character afraid to offend the delicate sensibilities of America because they fear not being able to reach the End Goal.