#268

https://books.google.com/books?id=-Wf2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA286&dq=Can+louis+die?+Why,+then+it's+time+to+join+him+again,+for+another+round,+the+lovely+man&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIm6qkypuWyAIVA5WACh1DkQJ0#v=onepage&q=Can%20louis%20die%3F%20Why%2C%20then%20it's%20time%20to%20join%20him%20again%2C%20for%20another%20round%2C%20the%20lovely%20man&f=false

War should only ever be feared. It’s almost beyond belief that the human race still engages in it, but if some do, then a certain number of us have to be ready for it. Robert E. Lee, watching the Union troops charge uphill at the entrenched Confederate positions at Fredericksburg, getting slaughtered with every new attack, famously remarked, “It is well that war is terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” I don’t know what to think of this anymore. Do soldiers love it? Hemingway did, but he was so crazed with his macho manhood testing that he strikes me as an outlier. I remember being a young man, and the hold that war romance had on me. Painting little lead soldiers, building model airplanes, reading books, and there were dirt clod fights, BB gun fights, and it was all very exciting. But it was all silliness, and I knew it. The problem is that the real deal kills so many people. B. is totally right: underneath the banners and bands, the horns blowing and the waving flags, a fear lurks. Not a poem I can argue with. “Hurrah for the lost!” is as furious and bitter a line of verse as you’ll ever find.

We had to defeat the Nazis, and the Confederacy was insidious enough that it was a fight that had to happen too. Wickedness arises, and sometimes you have to take it out with a bigger, badder military than it has. Propaganda, though, coats it in sentimental appeals to protecting our children, or you frame it in terms of adventure, patriotism, duty. But in the end, the fear returns, because under the imagery and sentimentality and jingoism, that’s what drives the whole machine. “Be Army Strong”: It’s effective marketing. But peace takes more strength than war. When fear of an enemy takes over, it becomes an incredibly effective marketing tool. Fear of Japs and Nazis, savage Indians, Communists, terrorists. Jingoism adopts fear of the other and uses it as a war-inciting tool. This is not the fear B. is talking about. His fear is the fear of our own national leaders, who so stupidly force the country to fight in places like Vietnam. In this poem, B. adopts the voice of the 60s counterculture, and he sees the widespread fear of our leaders and what they’ll do in the name of keeping us safe. Right on, brother.