Home of the Brave

Wars begin where you will but do not end where you please.
Machiavelli

I made the mistake of watching Home of the Brave. I knew I shouldn’t have but did anyway. I could not have watched that film in a theater. The movie does not represent extraordinary work as cinema, but it effectively illustrates a subject I have addressed here on many occasions, the mental health crisis facing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. It’s portrayal of the alcoholism, sleeplessness, disorientation, and agony reflects the reality now occurring.

I’ve written how family and loved ones claim they do not know the person who has returned from the war. The film provided an additional insight. The veterans who return home have the experience of no longer knowing their families and friends, a distinction new to me.

Those knowledgeable and able to see under the surface can tell that your humble blogger is no spiritual novice. I practice, but what I do is not in a church or a best selling book, and it's hard to find and even harder to be accepted. For sake of simplicity, let’s just say it involves development of an Awareness. Those who know recognize expanding a vision doesn’t lead to sugary insights about how the wonderful God, universe, apple pie, and baseball point to an awaiting heaven for the deserving.

Two people looking at the same phenomena can experience different planets. Watching Home of the Brave just crucified me. I broke down three times, got so angry I started screaming and had to stop the movie, and I could not deny myself the experience of sheer, distilled hatred, a cool body sensation that permits one to funnel fear into courage and an abandon that lets one swing from the soul. Anger is hot. Instantaneous hatred is cold. Sustained hatred is cool. Rage and hatred make a cocktail that dates back to primordial roots and survival against a violating threat, fueling a lust for the infliction of unspeakable agony and harm against the object of its focus.

Hatred is a response to an invasion, a violation, a betrayal.

Parents of raped, tortured and murdered children know the energy of which I speak. Watch a woman discover her husband is cheating and fear she will lose the father of her children. Watch a man learn his wife is cheating and wonder if his kids are his own. They don’t want a gun. They want restraints, sharp and hot objects, and time. They want to return every ounce of the suffering they have sustained.

At the end of the film, I was shaking. The NSA goons monitoring the blogosphere can relax. I am only going to blog, support certain candidates how I can, and vote. But I will express the hatred I feel for the war in Iraq and those who created it. I’m not going to do a thing to these lying malignant monsters, but no language exists for what I would like to do, just as no language can capture the amount of suffering and loss of life (not just physical) the evil greed ridden demons have inflicted on this nation and humanity as a whole.

What equates to the suffering they have inflicted on so many? Water-boarding would be the appetizer. I’d do that until they got used to it. Then we’d get into the real stuff that involves drills, circular saws, clippers, needles, a good blow torch, and stimulants to keep them conscious. After sufficient amputations by cutting or torching comes the IV into the bloodstream with the very slowly increasing concentrations of sulfuric acid that disintegrate them from the inside out.

Understand I describe an emotional state, a conceptual representation of a desire for justice against unspeakable evil. In reality I would faint at the first drop of blood. No language can grasp how much I HATE the war in Iraq, invented solely and entirely as a profit making venture for Cheney profiteers.

The enlightened can correct me, but thus far all my navigations suggest that as you open up to the brighter and brighter, the darker and darker comes along for the ride. You can’t get to the top without knowing the bottom. It's a package deal.

Every stick has two ends.