Posted on 01/20/2015 5:20:13 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
[SNIP]
The exchanges are just the latest eruption in a long culture war, analysts said, with lines clearly demarcated. “As screenings have sold out, conservative media has manned barricades against liberals who have attacked the movie or the idea of lionizing Kyle,” conservative David Weigel wrote for Bloomberg. He noted that much of the controversy involves the extended battle over guns — and gun control — and pits pro-Iraq war conservatives against anti-war liberals.
But it also hints at another gulf in American politics: the plummeting number of Americans who serve in the armed services, which has given rise to what experts call a widening cultural divide between civilians and combat veterans. During World War II, more than 12 percent of Americans served in the military. Today fewer than .5 percent do, and many belong to a demographic that military analyst Thomas Ricks called “socially isolated, politically conservative.” That growing chasm has resulted in a modern America in which few grant much thought to soldiers except for ritualized reverence.
If there’s any cultural force that exacerbates misunderstandings, it’s movies like “American Sniper,” according to Karl Eikenberry and David Kennedy in the New York Times. To many conservatives and members of the Armed Services, Chris Kyle was a man beyond reproach, and to criticize him disrespects both the military and those who choose to serve.
“The greatest challenge to our military is not from a foreign enemy — it’s from the widening gap between the American people and their armed forces,” the authors wrote in 2013. “… The media offer us images of drone pilots, thousands of miles from the fray, coolly and safely dispatching enemies in their electronic cross hairs. Hollywood depicts superhuman teams of Special Operations forces snuffing out their adversaries with clinical precision.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Out of the fire; back into the frying pan.
OTOH, why does one need to renounce Communism to have a religious faith?
An awful lot of our FR Catholics seem to think that their new pope is a commie!
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?view=main&yr=2015&wknd=03&p=.htm
makes me happy for a couple reasons.
Thank you for your kind words! Yes, I do know what I did mattered—it was a privilege to be able to provide medical care to our warriors and their families. I just didnt go into work everyday with the same levels of risk as them. All who wore a uniform and honorably served along with their families surely are patriots. And those who support and encourage them, too. Wouldn’t trade my life for anything! Praying constantly for our country and its future!
I just needed to compose myself and sought privacy and cold water to rinse my face. I have lived in a testosterone rich environment all my life so the language and war violence didn’t bother me, plus working in a medical environment for 20 years kinda immunized me to some sights. It was his sad death at the hands of another vet with ptsd that brought on the tears. So many lives affected by these wars....
“It’s a shame he didn’t have faith in Jesus instead.”
He did - that’s why he came back to the Catholic faith.
“OTOH, why does one need to renounce Communism to have a religious faith?”
Here’s what the pope of Gramsci’s day said:
“We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.” Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, n. 117
“An awful lot of our FR Catholics seem to think that their new pope is a commie!”
And a lot of Protestant anti-Catholics believe all sorts of crazy ideas invented out of thin air. Just because people can post on the internet doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. Anti-Catholic prove that every day.
Now that is interesting.
Gramsci is an interesting fellow. His long march proposal was used to destroy thousands of years of traditions and much of what was Western Civilization.
Perhaps he was allowed a glimpse of that before his death to bring him back to God?
Kyle was a complicated, fallen man. As we all are. Many of his own unit did not like him (though that is common with snipers), and many thought he “sold out”.
But he was trying to give back. He was trying to heal others who had been broken by the war. He was doing it the way he had found peace. Many are talking of his faults, and I am sure he had many. But in he risked, and gave, his life in the service of others.
“Perhaps he was allowed a glimpse of that before his death to bring him back to God?”
I think it was the nuns. They cared for him and he knew it. While his commie friends could or would do nothing for him, the nuns did everything for him. In the end, I think he saw who had something precious to share (faith in Christ) and who has empty theories that achieve nothing (communism).
I guess the libtards are too worried about not being invited to the right soireés.
Indeed they do!
http://www.fatima.org/essentials/facts/seers.asp
I'll keep this uppermost in my mind.
“I’ll keep this uppermost in my mind.”
No, you won’t.
“The Hollyweird people have spoken on which was the best movie, but after the vote of the people willing to spend their money to see pics
That’s a slippery slope right there. You could easily take that logic and declare that the godawful “Transformers” films were some of the best films ever made!”
Value is in the eye of the spender. After all, do you read the NYT because they say they are the best paper?
It is also apprehension that perhaps the Left doesn't really set the cultural agenda to the degree to which they aspire. It isn't for lack of trying.
“Preemptive mindreading!”
Just reality.
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