Winter Soldiers deliver the boons of their repeated trips to Hell and back
CAMILO MEJIA: I just—there was this blank space in my memory, which is a blank space that I have for other experiences, like this time when this child was basically riding in the passenger seat with his father, and we decapitated his father with a machinegun. And when we went down to the low ground to search for enemy wounded, I remember seeing this young person standing next to this body that was decapitated. And when I think about it, I cannot remember the expression on the child’s face. I cannot remember that he was a child. I only know this because people told me later on that was the man’s son, the man’s young son, who was standing next to the body.
And it’s because not only—it’s not enough to—to dehumanize the enemy by means of your military background or training or the indoctrination or the heat and the fatigue and the intensity of the environment, but there are times when it is so hard to deal with these experiences that I suppose your own body, your own psyche, in order to protect you from these memories and in order to protect you from losing your humanity, erases certain memories that are too painful to deal with, that are too overwhelming to deal with. And whether it is to punish the men in your squad or the men in your unit or to erase the face of a child whose father was decapitated next to him in a car at a traffic control point, or whether it is to pose next to a dead civilian or Iraqi or whoever, it is necessary to become dehumanized, because war is dehumanizing.
And we have a whole new generation—we have over a million Iraqi dead. We have over five million Iraqis displaced. We have close to 4,000 dead. We have close to 60,000 injured, both by combat injuries and non- combat injuries, coming back from this war. That’s not even counting the post-traumatic stress disorder and all the other psychological and emotional scars that our generation is bringing home with them. So all that just to say that war is dehumanizing a whole new generation of this country and destroying the people in the country of Iraq. In order for us to reclaim our humanity as a military and as a country, we demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, care and benefits for all veterans, and reparations for the Iraqi people so they can rebuild their country on their terms.
(Emphasis added.)
WORD! The frame of mind we've had beaten into us, the conditioning mentioned by the Winter Soldiers, is the problem itself; acting within it will bring us no relief.
[(Absolute Supremacy) //NO 1's Land// (Absolute Subjugation)]
That's the cosmos of our oppressors. And as Slavoj Zizek points out, it's all too often the frame of mind of the Left. Choosing the role of underdog in our oppressor's cosmos won't cure what ails us, either.
What ails us, Uncle? I'm glad I asked: our unfounded, Newtonian, mechanical model of Psyche, based on the CELLf-imprisoned quantum singularity of pure pain.
Not being satisfied with mechanizing the cosmos, turning Gaia into a Frankenstein's monster that we then do not husband, but instead PIMP for all She's worth, no, we social scientists, esp. psychologists such as myself, have mechanized and weaponized humanity's greatest boons for the pursuit of private gain on global scales.
Is it any surprise that Walls of Denial erupt from the ground wherever we go? Here's why:
[(Absolute Supremacy) //NO 1's Land// (Absolute Subjugation)]
This misbegotten conception of the cosmos imprisons us all in CELLves of our own making. It's the pattern for the cosmos in which we fight a perpetual Holy War against Them Evil Doers Over There.
The area labeled //NO 1's Land// is the "chasm" that divides us. It's the area upon which Israel builds its apartheid wall. It's the illusory division in our own hearts between our self and all else. Ever wonder where the "cracks in the system" come from?
beloved /UNION/ Beloved
And into which Union experience is pouring; from which, awareness is arising; and out of which, We are Flowing {Mater 'n Pater} Rhyming in Water.
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