When Will We Ever Learn????
The Stories that Feed our Endless Wars
Rev. Ted Tollefson January 24, 2010

I'm taking my cue today from the chorus of a beloved folksong:
“When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”
I'm going to shift the focus of the question a bit:
not when will we ever learn?
but what keeps us from learning?
I'm not going to talk to you about the “military industrial complex”
or the limits of two-party democracy.
My field is not political science, economics or military history.
My field is stories:
how the stories we tell shape our identity, actions and sense of purpose
as individuals and as a nation.

I believe there are two complexes of stories that block our capacity to learn from past mistakes and have kept us fighting wars for most of the last 60 years that are far from home, unnecessary, wasteful and rarely winable.

Historical Obstacles to Learning
The first set of stories are anchored in the particularities of American history and geography.
They arise out of the distinctive features of America and our history here.  I note for the record that “history” is about 70% “story”.

America: The New Eden, the Promised Land
Many new immigrants, your ancestors and mine,were lured to America by extravagant promises:  America was the Promised Land.  America was a place where there were rivers of free beer, well-paying jobs for everyone and free land just for the taking.

America was a “New Eden”---a vast, empty continent just waiting for thousands of white Adams and Eves to populate it, name everything, and exploit its endless resources.

There are several problems with this myth, besides the fact that it's not true.
First, by picturing America as an “empty continent” we conveniently ignored millions of indigenous people who had been calling America or “Turtle Island” home
for 20,000 years or more.  Small wonder that when millions of them perished
from small pox or other viruses carried in “gift blankets”.  Our ancestors often took the demise of native Americans as a sign of divine favor.

America was also a place of the “endless frontier”.  No failure was permanent
and there was little incentive to learn from past mistakes.  If you failed in Ohio,
you could move to Wisconsin or Minnesota and if you failed again, you could just keep moving west.  We became a nation of rootless “Lone Rangers” with no native “Tonto” to teach us how to bless the land, give thanks to its creatures or to properly bury the dead we left behind.

America was also understood as a land of “boundless resources, endless possibilities”.
There were millions of trees, and thousands of square miles of prairie.  So our ancestors, unless they were very poor, had little reason to learn to conserve natural resources,
replenish the earth, or dispose of waste carefully.  We just took what we wanted
and dumped the by products in the air or water, letting those down wind or down river deal with the mess.  I am part of a generation of Duluthians who carry some taconite tailings in my gullet because Reserve Mining thought that Lake Superior was a dandy place to dump its waste.

America the New Land, the Great Exception
America, as one lovely film puts it, is “the New Land”.  We're enthralled with all things new and improved.  We admire the young, not the old.  Like many statues of the uknown Norwegian immigrants we look to the west to the future for hope not back to the east, towards Europe.  Ronald Reagan, like to paraphrase the free-thinking patriot Thomas Paine
by saying: “We have it in our power to begin history all over again.”

Our Transcendentalist ancestors like Emerson, Thoreau & Fuller were also enthralled with the “new”, the “original', and “innocence”.  Following Emerson they sought “an original” relationship with Nature and a religion, literature and philosophy of the present and not the past.  Like Clara Barton, founder of the American Red-Cross, we often like “anything new that could improve the past”.

The problem with our enthusiasm for the New, is that it reinforces our relunctance to learn from the past.  We keep making the same mistakes over and over again and are too often puzzled why this chapter doesn't according to our script.  As as nation we “don't know much about history” and don't take the time to learn.

Many patriots celebrate the doctrine of American Exceptionalism like a former senator from Minnesota used to say---- America is the “great exception” to the rules that apply to other nations...  So we carry a sanctified learning disability with us and can't understand why history doesn't always have a happy ending--- why the Vietnamese, the Iraquis and the Afghanis don't welcome our troops with open arms and toss flowers rather than bombs at our liberating armies.

America: the Chosen Nation, God's New Israel
America sometimes sees itself as the new “Chosen People”, God's “new Israel”, a “Redeemer Nation”.  We are driven by a “Manifest Destinty” that derives not just from ourselves or our history but God Almighty.  It is not only our right, but our duty to spread the Gospel of Liberty-Justice- and free-market Capitalism to the 4 corners of the earth.

“with God on our side”
we can do no wrong
and the body count just proves
that might is right
and God wants us to win.

Summary:
These three stories---- America the New Eden, America the Great Exception,
American the Redeemer Nation---
combine to produce a COMPLEX
that older, wiser and sadder civilizations like Greece and Israel
have understood for thousands of years.
They called it HUBRIS-----
over-weening pride
the feeling of invincibility
that usually comes
just before the bus plummets off the cliff.

The Greeks and Hebrew told tragic stories,
of kings and heroes
whose special excellence raises them to exceptional heights.
These same qualities, relentless pursued
cause the heroes to fall into disgrace
because they will not listen
to the wisdom of nature, elders, or the chorus saying:
“don't take more than your share...
don't mistake yourself for a god...
you can't always get what you want”.
The great kings of the past
frequently end up in rags,
blind as a bat
without a penny to their name.
The almost-kings and celebrity-heroes of our time
frequently come to a tragic end:
Tiger Woods goes into rehab to fix his favorite itch;
Emerson and Reagan die into the dwindling light of dementia;
Kennedy and Clinton are remembered
more for their escapades in bed
than the causes which they lived for.

Counter-Stories: Witnessing on the side of Humility

The counter-weight of hubris is HUMILITY
living a little closer to the earth,
witnessing for our common humanity
taking better care of the 100 feet
entrusted to our care.

We can study our family histories
and our community histories
and tell the sad side of the heroic stories:
how many ancestors never found bliss
at the bottom of an empty bottle
how 3 young black men were lynched
in my hometown of Duluth, MN
by citizens who lost track of their common decency.

We can learn more about the histories
of those who have suffered
because we tried too hard to 'save” them.
Our Native American neighbors from Prairie Island
are struggling to protect their children
from the threat of low-level radiation next door.
Do they have the right,
to neutral, transparent and trustworthy monitorying of radiation
by somone not owned by the utility?

We can lend our voices
to the tragic wisdom of older civilizations.
We can tell stories
that don't always have a happy ending.
We can lament the passing of beloved family, friends and mentors
without wishing them too hastily
into a gated heavenly city.
We can make sure that the tragic wisdom of proverbs
are passed on to future generations:
“pride cometh before the fall”
“don't count your chickens before they're hatched”
“if it ain't broke, don't fix it!”

Mythic Obstacles to Learning

There's a second set of stories that contribute to our national learning disability.
These stories are transcultural, trans-historical
not tied to the particularities of the American landscape & history.
These myths, or normative stories are built around a grain of truth
which becomes a Big Lie
when it is told unconsciously and too often
without noticing the life-threatening side-effects.

1. Redemption thru vengeance
One of the deeply rooted and often repeated stories we tell ourselves
is “Redemption through Vengeance”.
There have been hundreds if not thousands of popular American films
built around this theme including most of the films of Charles Bronson,
Clint Eastwood's early westerns and the “Dirty Harry” series; “Rambo”, “Straw Dogs”, “Mad Max”, “Kill Bill”, “Enough”, “Taken”, , the TV series “Kung Fu” and “Walker Texas Ranger” --even “Avatar”. Venge-flics typically have three acts:

Act One: really bad people do bad things to good, defenseless people.
Act Two: the hero goes into training and transforms him/herself into a weapon
Act Three: the hero kills the bad people and justice is restored



2. The Good War: War is Glorious, Enobling, and Necessary

There is a second myth of a “good war”
that we've been looking for since 1945---
a war that is just and necessary and winnable
that will enoble our men and women
and give them lessons for a life-time---
a winnable war, with no moral ambiguity.
Unfortunately, the wars available since the “Great War”
have been filled with ambiguity
and are difficult to justify
if you stick to the facts or suffer the consequences.

It's also no easy matter to train men and women
into becoming “good warriors”.
After the first world war, it was discovered
that many soldiers fired their guns
into the air but not at another human being.
So an ingenious method was devised to turn ordinary citizens into killers:
break down individual identity
brand compassion as “unmanly” “soft” “feminine”
rebrand violence as “manly”, “sexy”, “powerful”.
I will spare you my rendition of “this is my rifle, this is my gun”.

Because war over-rides our basic impulse to compassion
with a willingness to kill-on-command
it degrades whatever it touches.

3. Christian Warriors
The last component of this toxic trinity
is the cult of the Christian Warrior:
the belief that Jesus was a godly warrior
and if we have the right stuff
and say the magic words
we too can become sanctified killers for Christ.

This is the gospel taught at some military schools
it is the bread and butter of right-wing hate groups.
“Kill for Christ” and try to forget that he was a Jewish peacemaker
born out of wedlock to a homeless family and an unwed mother.
Until recently, there was a manufacturer of “Christian” gun-sights
who enscribed every scope
with a reference to a Bible verse:
as if killing another human being
could ever be sanctioned by the “Prince of Peace”.

Counter-Stories for Peace-Makers
What can we do to witness for the side of Peace-Making
and restore compassion to its rightful place in our hearts and minds?

We can remind those who seek redemption thru vengeance
that the cycles of violence rarely end.
As Gandhi said: “An eye for an eye soon makes the whole world blind”
Real life rarely fits into the 3 act formula of venge flix----
usually there's a 4th, 5th, and 6th act
and the killing goes on and on and on.

We can also point to some of the more recent films of Clint Eastwood---
that might be called the Redemption of “Dirty Harry”.
A recent film titled “Invictus” retells the story of Nelson Mandella
who chose NOT to seek revenge
on the white former rulers of South Africa
and thereby saved thousands of lives
and lead a unified nation
through the process of “truth and reconciliation”.

“Grand Turino” shows the deadly results
and of trying to stop cycles of violence
with more violence.
Its gritty Korea war vetran
finds one way out by following the trail
of a pre-modern Jewish peace-maker.

And to those who say that war is noble, good, sexy, fun
we can tell the rest the story.
We can insist that the news media show
the terrors of the battlefield without airbrushing
the body parts scattered by a “surgical” air strike
and the rows of coffins coming home.
We can remind those who romanticize war
that war is state sanctioned MASS MURDER
that War turns ordinary, compassionate citizens into the “corps”:
a highly mechanized machine that kills on command.

We can also make sure that everyone sees the films
that show the unromantic, dehumanizing side of war and training for war:
“Hurt Locker”, “Full Metal Jacket”, “Gallipole”, “Coming Home”, “All Quiet on the Western Front”.

3. Christian Soldiers
Finally, to those who want to play “Christian soldiers”
we can invite them to re-read the teachings of Jesus
and talk about the Sermon on the Mount
or the Beatitudes.
Why are the “meek”, “the poor” and the “peace-makers” blessed
and not the bold, the rich and the violent?

Or we can ask our friends and neighbors
what Jesus did when Roman soldiers came to arrest him.
Peter grabbed a sword and cut off a soldiers ear.
What did the “Prince of Peace” say to Peter?
Not “nice shot Peter”,
but “Peter...those who live by the sword die by the sword.”

As a preacher, I also suspect that Jesus said:
“Peter, haven't you been listening to my sermons???
Remember 'turn the other cheek'
or “Return not evil for evil”?

Conclusion: Blessed are the Peace-Makers
I'd like to end on a positive note
by sharing some words from
one of my mentors in the art of peace-making.
It's a version of the “Beatitudes”
which I pieced together in the wake of 9/11.
Blessed are those who mourn
for you will be comforted.

Blessed are those with gentle hearts
for the earth will be entrusted to your care.

Blessed are those who thirst for justice
for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are those who purify their hearts and minds
for you will dwell in the presence
of a fresh and living truth

Blessed are the merciful
for you will plant seeds of mercy
in the hearts of your enemies.

Blessed are the peace-makers
for in you the words of the prophets
have become flesh and blood.

[Matt. 5.4-9]

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A Dozen Films Against War (some lifted from Answer.com)*

1. Gallipole (WW 1). A tender story of a young Australian athlete and his friends who die for no good reason in the trench battles of WWI.

2. All Quiet on the Western Front (WW 1)* Released in 1930 and based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque about a gung-ho German soldier in World War I, this film is the timeless classic of the anti-war genre.

3. Catch-22. (WW 2) Based on delightful novel by Joseph Heller, comically portrays the absurdity of war and the bureaucracies which sustain it.

4. Sophie's Choice (WW 2)* This harrowing film, based on the novel by William Styron, gives compelling insight into the lives of survivors of the Holocaust. Meryl Streep's performance is transfixing; Sophie's heartbreaking story gives one more angle to the twisted horrors of war.

5. Gran Turino (Korea, aftermath) A stunning film by Clint Eastwood demonstrating the futility of trying to stop violence with violence.

6. Hearts & Minds (Vietnam)* By alternating skillfully between personal accounts of politicians, pilots, and bombed-out farmers on the ground, Peter Davis' stunning documentary about the Vietnam war achieves its effect.

7. Full Metal Jacket (Vietnam, bootcamp) A powerful film by Stanley Kubrick which how basic training to release human cruelty.

8. The Deer-Hunter (Vietnam) A devasting depiction of the brutal aftermath of the Vietnam War, starring a young Robert De Niro.

9. The Hurt Locker (Iraq) The best anti-war film to come out of the War in Iraq, and a pretty good bet for an Academy Award.

10. Three Kings* In David O. Russell's "Three Kings," war is a surreal, almost hallucinatory state of being. Set in Iraq just after the Gulf War has ended, three soldiers discover a bunker stolen gol

11. Dr. Strangelove* Stanley Kubrick's cold-war farce trumped the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" for the only anti-war comedy on this list. This chilling tale of the "Doomsday Machine," starring the sublime Peter Sellers at his silliest.

12. Heaven's Gate (2005).  A thoughtful and complex film about The Crusades which generously portrays both Christian and Muslim leaders. The folly of war and its cost to civilians are amply shown.

 
Blessed are the peace-makers