WAR WATCH WEDNESDAY, #109, JANUARY 18, 2023
#106 rejected US bellicose militarism.
#107 advocated empathy and stewardship.
#108 warned of nuclear holocaust.
All of these messages are finally appeals to block war, named in the UN Charter as the worst crime against humanity. But some people must experience the terrible cruelty and destruction of war, either directly or by reading about or viewing them, before they will act. That is why combat veterans are among the most persuasive opponents of war. Dalton Trumbo attempted to provide that experience in his novel, Johnny Got His Gun
KNOWLEDGE OF WAR, ENDING WAR
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
[The thoughts are those of the horribly wounded, WWI quadruple amputee protagonist whose face was also destroyed.]
“He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be. For he had seen the future he had tasted it and now he was living it. He had seen the airplanes flying he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath. He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality. He saw a world of dead fathers and crippled brothers and crazy screaming sons. He saw a world of armless mothers clasping headless babies to their breasts trying to scream out their grief from throats that were cancerous with gas. He saw starved cities black and cold and motionless and the only things in this whole dead terrible world that made a move or a sound were the airplanes that blackened the sky and far off against the horizon the thunder of the big guns and the puffs that rose from barren tortured earth from their shells exploded.”
“He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like. Already they were looking ahead they were fighting the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they would fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret. They knew that if all the little people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons of bitches we won’t fight we won’t be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what speeches you make no matter what slogans you write.”
“If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us. They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food. . . .oh no it will not be us who die. It will be you. It will be you—you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobble kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live. Remember this. Remember this well you people who plan for war. Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives. We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel.”
From Chris Hedges’ essay,“Reading Proust in War,” Chris Hedges Report (Nov. 20, 2022) on In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (7 vols.)
“Proust chronicles the poisonous effects of World War I on French society, embodied by the hostess Mme. Verdurin, who uses the war to elevate her social prestige while the suicidal tactics of French generals leads to six million casualties, including 1.4 million dead and 4.2 million wounded, along with numerous army mutinies. Generals and war ministers are celebrities. Artists are reviled or ignored, unless they produce wartime kitsch. Women adorn themselves in “rings or bracelets made out of fragments of exploded shells or copper bands from 75 millimeter ammunition.” The rich, bursting with patriotism, while sacrificing little, busy themselves with charities for the soldiers at the front, benefit performances and afternoon tea parties. Wartime clichés, amplified by the press, are mindlessly parroted by the public. “For the idiocy of the times caused people to pride themselves on using the expressions of the times,” Proust notes. The war eradicates the demarcation between civilians and the military. It degrades language and culture. It fuels a toxic nationalism. It ushers in the modern era of industrial war where nations turn their resources over to the military and, with it, outsized political and social power. The war, the backdrop of the final chapter, signals the end of La Belle Époque.”
DOOMSDAY CLOCK
Meet the woman who designed the Doomsday Clock This article in the Bulletin's virtual Turn Back the Clock tour explains how the Doomsday Clock was born from the creative mind of artist Martyl Langsdorf. Read more.