Ok, I just read this one pager on page 30 of the last issue of SLAP magazine and I’m going to vent, because that’s half of what having a blog is about. You can say whatever you want and even if no one listens at least you feel better.
The page is entitled “Join the SLAPMAG Skate Army”. That sounds fine, but soon after that is where I start to disagree with Gary Collins, who I’m sure I’d get along with just fine as long as we didn’t start talking about politics.
In his writing Gary disrespects the US Army recruiting practices. Ok, I probably agreed with him on that side of things. Army recruiters rank up there with litigation attorneys on my list of people who must go. I also agree with a number of other things Gary says, but this wouldn’t be a very interesting post if I just talked about how I agree with him, so let’s move on to the disagreements.
1. Gary states that if you join the US Army “you may be shipped to a foreign land to slaughter people…” insinuating that this is what the army is doing in Iraq at the moment.
Many arguments depend on semantics, or the meaning of words. In this case, I’m not entirely sure what Gary means by the word “slaughter”. If by “slaughter” he means “kill people” then yes, if you join the army you may do that. However, I get the impression that what Gary really means by the word “slaughter” is “indiscriminantly or perhaps purposely shoot large numbers of innocent people”. If that’s what Gary means, then I disagree that this is what the army is doing in Iraq, and I think anyone who thinks as such is woefully ignorant of the true nature of what is going on in Iraq and would do well to talk to a soldier who has been there. You’ll hear a different story than what you get from the news.
Yes, innocent people die in wars. It’s inevitable, but justifiable. Would you be willing to risk killing one innocent person if it meant you could save two? By going into Iraq the army knew that innocent civilians would die, but they also knew it would prevent many times that number from dying. Don’t forget, it’s Saddam who was really slaughtering his own people by the hundreds of thousands. He’s the one who was cutting up daughters into pieces and delivering them in garbage bags to the parents to teach them a lesson. It’s the terrorists over there who are cutting people’s heads off, not the US Army. However many innocent people may have been accidentally killed by the US Army in Iraq, it pales in comparison to the innocent people who were tortured and killed by Saddam.
Have you seen the movie Hotel Rwanda yet? About 1 million people were murdered in Rwanda while the US and everyone else did nothing. Is that what we should have done in Iraq? By doing nothing we would have been letting Saddam get away with murdering many more people than have been accidentally killed by us going in there. Is that compassion?
2. “It’s a bit sad that the country with the most money, resources, and weapons assumes power over the rest of the world.”
Yeah, it’s a bit sad that we provide billions of dollars of aid to other countries to combat AIDS and other diseases, build roads, build power plants, water purification plants, and establish schools. The US gives more money to other countries than any other country by a long shot. It’s sad that we got into WWII and saved the world from a dictator who murdered tens of millions of people. It’s sad that after defeating Japan we gave them all sorts of money and aid and turned their country into the second most prosperous country in the world, rather than just pillaging all their riches and killing or enslaving everyone like they would have done to us if they had defeated us. It’s sad that we had to get involved and save the world from the Soviet Union who wanted to take away democracy from everyone. What business is it of ours to ensure that people in other countries can choose who they want to run their government? It’s sad that we have prevented who knows how many more hundreds of thousands of people from being tortured and murdered in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, or by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sad, really. Why can’t we just leave everyone alone and keep all our money and power to ourselves instead of helping people? We should stop meddling in other countries affairs like we did in Rwanda. See? They worked it out without our help. Over a million people murdered while we looked the other way, that’s all.
3. “Plus, as long as Bush is Commander in Chief, the only direction we’re moving in is down.”
Ok, I actually might agree with Gary on this one. I’m not too pleased with Bush. I think he’s too liberal and caves in too much and has done some stupid things, like this senior drug benefit thing through Medicare. I think he should just cancel social security and say “Sorry, it was a stupid program to begin with, we’re going to stop collecting it, and we’re going to pay out all the money that’s in there and once it’s gone it’s gone.”
I think Bush has slowed the downward descent of the country that Clinton started, but I agree, it’s still going downward.
4. “Rural American fools who remain racist, uneducated, and only know what the networks let them know?”
How ironic, that’s how Gary’s comments sound to me. He doesn’t sound racist, but he does sound hateful and bitter. He does sound uneducated, and it sounds like he’s just regurgitating what the mainstream networks tell him. I bet everyone around Gary agrees with his point of view and he’s just going along with what everyone around him says without bothering to do any real research into it.
I disagree with Gary, but does that make me a racist? I don’t think I’ve ever had a racist thought or feeling in my body. None of the people I know who would agree with me on these issues has ever expressed any racist sentiment that I know of. Does disagreeing with Gary make me uneducated? Well, I do have a master’s degree and I continue studying a lot, but maybe by “educated” he means “someone who agrees with him”. And I get my information from both sides. I listen to what the networks have to say (most of which is in perfect agreement with what Gary is saying, so I’m not sure why he thinks they’re against him), and I listen to what the other people have to say as well. And you might be surprised to know I don’t agree with everything I hear on talk radio.
5. “…outside of America anyone associated with our government is not respected and often despised.”
First of all, I’m not sure that’s true. I can see how someone might think it’s true if all they do is listen to the mainstream TV networks and talk with their friends who already agree with them.
And would everyone in other countries hate the US if it weren’t for what they’re hearing from their own news sources, who may have their own agendas? Or maybe they’re just listening to our own news media that hates the US and hates the army. If you only hear one half of the story it’s hard to see things as they really are, and unfortunately the news media is pretty united in how they spin things. They adhere to the practice commonly attributed (perhaps incorrectly) to Dr. Goebbels, Hitler’s propoganda minister, that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Apparently Gary believes it. Sure, you could say I’m believing lies from the other side, and if Gary was truly intellectually inclined all our arguments would probably be inconclusive due to a lack of any evidence that would be taken as concrete by the other, but my guess it that Gary is just saying what he has heard other people say and he’s never considered for a second the position taken by those he views as opponents.
I agree that there are people in other countries that hate the US. It’s natural for people to be jealous of the guy on top. And of course our enemies hate us. But I’d challenge you to find some guy who has been in the army in Iraq and ask him how Iraqis feel about the US. You might be surprised to learn that unlike what you hear on the news, the Iraqis the army comes in contact with are ecstatic about the US being over there. If there are Iraqis who hate the US, other than those who were in power before we took Saddam out, those I’ve talked to in the military haven’t seen them. But the news will find one person who has something to complain about in Iraq, and that’s the only person they’ll show on the nightly news.
6. “For the most part skaters respect other lifestyles, the army does not.”
The funny part about this statement is that it’s self-contradictory. Gary obviously does not respect the lifestyle of soldiers. You know, so often we project our own faults onto others. We think everyone around us is intolerant because we are, we think everyone around us is racist because we are, we think everyone around us is a mindless robot because we are, and we just assume other people are like us, without seeing where our thoughts are coming from.
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Finale
Gary and I do agree on a lot of things. Skating can give you discipline, direction, self-esteem, comaraderie, and respect for others. It has certainly helped me in all those ways and I feel so privileged to be a skater. But let’s be realistic about this–skateboarding is “play”. It’s fun. It’s a leisure activity that can be enjoyed only by the select few who don’t have to work every waking hour in order to survive (which is the situation most of the people in the world live in). While there may be some idiots in the military and while skateboarding can give a person many positive things it’s hard to compare it to, let alone give it superiority over, being willing to give up your life for what you believe is a good cause (regardless of whether it is or not, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with it when a soldier is trying to save his buddy’s life). Fighting in a war is life and death, and skating is fun, and putting the military down doesn’t make skating any better than it already is.
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“I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it.” - Voltaire
You know whats funny, is the skaters who also happen to be in the Army. I wonder if Gary thought about them when he was writing his article. I haven’t read it yet, but am very tempted, just so I can be “informed.” Thanks for posting this blog, I immensely enjoyed reading it.
Yeah, I agree with you on all points. I don’t want anyone to suppose for a second that I think Gary should keep his mouth shut, he has the right to say whatever he wants, and I have the right to say whatever I want to in response, and other people reading it have the right to read both sides and think or say whatever they want and that’s what makes this country great, because in North Korea or China we’d probably all be in jail for saying what we think.
And yes, I didn’t mention it but I also wonder what the skaters who are in the military will think of Gary’s column. I’m sure there are least a few issues of SLAP making their way over there, and I’ll bet some letters to the editor are going to be on their way back.