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voice of someone who has stopped asking questions
Saturday, March 22 2003
For about as long as I could stomach, this morning I found myself listening to a military press conference featuring General Tommy Franks speaking from theatre headquarters in Qatar. There was something about that guy that I didn't like. If I was Muslim and this guy was sending tanks and planes against my country so that he could become its interim Christian ruler, I think I'd be obligated to fight back, even if it was on behalf of Saddam Hussein. To my ear, General Tommy Franks didn't come across as fully human, but this probably has more to do with my prejudices than any failings on his part. Nonetheless, there's something about the cadence of a career military man that screams out, "I am an unthinking cog in the machine" It's difficult to imagine an original idea every coming to a guy who speaks this way. (By contrast, Colin Powell sounds like a real intellectual; I'm curious how he managed to rise up through the military without becoming a conversational pipe wrench.)
To join the military is to willingly give up your individuality and whatever talents you might have for seeing through the bullshit, since those talents quickly land you in trouble. Once all traces of individuality and enlightenment are exorcised, the skills necessary to climb the military career ladder ensure even less humanity. To succeed in a massively inefficient bureaucracy like the US Military, my guess is that the most important talent is ass kissing (that's certainly the way it worked at dotcoms). Creativity, though useful when planning a war, is probably widely regarded as a suspiciously effeminate talent by the military brass.
The stiff, military way of talking is a learned thing. There was this guy who went to my high school who seemed like a warm, fun-loving guy before he joined the military. When I next saw him a few years after our graduation - there was that repulsive cadence, complete with a eye contact regime that I could have written in four lines of Javascript. I find it interesting that even women gradually come to speak in the "I am a machine with superficial social skills" manner. I remember one of my cousins in California went off to join the military and when I finally got around to meeting her, I found that she spoke this way. By the way, some Christians also have something in their speech that reminds me of the military cadence. It's the voice of someone who has stopped asking questions. To me, such people are already dead.
Then, of course, there are the actual things Tommy Franks says, many of them clearly drawn from a list of "talking points" already covered in the past by Rumsfeld et al. It's no longer a coalition of the willing, but a "growing coalition," with "43 nations" and "15 who don't want their names used." Wait a minute - since when did we start counting anonymous countries in our alliances? Meanwhile, the only people getting killed or injured are either British or American. That ought to tell you something.
My head cold became gradually worse throughout the day. There was a period this morning when I was shooting hoops with Gretchen in our basketball goal. Then we went to Anaconda Sports to get me some shoes suitable for safari hiking (we'll be going to South Africa next week!). Towards evening I was in a weakened state and was sneezing every few minutes or so.
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