Mark Morford was the writer of an article who's title is indelibly etched in my mind:
"Pretty Blue Angels of Death". You can still find it out there. I read it again the other day because I needed a laugh.
For the others to laugh at Miss Morford...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/770353/posts Pretty Blue Angels of Death [Anti-Military/Anti-USA BARF ALERT!]
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 10/16/02 | Mark Morford
Posted on 10/16/2002 4:54 PM EDT by MikalM
Let us now happily observe the Navy's shiny and world-renowned Blue Angels precision flying team roaring over S.F. Bay, shaking the office windows and triggering a million car alarms and inducing coronaries in the elderly and panicking the easily panickable into thinking Armageddon is at hand at last, take me Jesus I am ready, oh wait, damn, it's just Fleet Week.
Let us further imagine the happy throngs of spectators enjoying the annual air show (yours truly included), over a million people this past weekend, all largely awed by the power and grace and insane fuel consumption and butt-clenching roar of the six powerful F/A-18 Hornets dancing over Alcatraz and pretending to almost collide and causing ten thousand Marina babies to cry.
Such was the scene we witnessed over the past sunny lovely weekend in San Francisco, repeated every year except last, what with the 9/11 confusion and all, not really a good time to demonstrate the power and intense danger of hardcore macho military aircraft buzzing around tall buildings in a major city at 600 mph.
But now all is happy and good. Now all is back to normal. The Blue Angels can fly free again and demonstrate the beauty and strength of mankind's shocking and soul-curdling technological warfare achievements, and isn't it reassuring and sweet how they are just for show and spectacle and slightly sinister Navy PR because of course we are now a country at peace. Oh wait.
This is why many people I know loathe the Blue Angels, despise what they represent, their wastefulness and aggro-military machismo and how they impact the environment and scare the aforementioned elderly and by the way whatever the hell is in that funky oil-smoke the planes always discharge for special effect can't be all that healthy.
And hence many people refuse to watch the show; they curse the roar and the flyover surprises and the entire Bay Area military connection, find it more than a little sad and strange that we see such entertainment value in what is essentially a bunch of incredibly expensive and noxious weapons of war.
But this is exactly the point. The Blue Angels need to be seen right now. Their awful power needs to be ingested by the cultural soul, to realize their destructive and deadly power, to see how they are, while ironically wonderful and fun and strangely beautiful to watch in their ugly lethality, they are loaded with terrible deeper meanings, industrialized brutal poetry.
Let us now imagine, say, Afghanistan. Let us now imagine Iraq (soon, Georgie, soon). Squadron after squadron of these very same gorgeous roaring $28 million jets but this time not lovely shiny polished blue and not moving in entertaining smoke-trailing formations across the sky and making little boys squeal.
But this time in tight aggressive hillside-annihilating bombing-run formation, dropping billions in deadly ordnance every day for weeks and months, devastating towns, killing foreign women and swarthy Islamic babies and, oh yes, those pesky ragtag al-Qaida fighters who scattered to the hills months ago. Let us imagine what that must feel like, to see those planes roar overhead, with an entirely different mission.
For many they are brute macho breathtaking reassurance that America is still fighting some sort of good fight, still kickass and badass and hoo boy watch out here come the Good Guys, that our tax-dollar trillions in bloated military expenditures can at least provide a nice afternoon air show in the park, whew.
But of course these exact jets are also, for millions of others, the bringers of death. These very same aircraft are awesome machines of violent destruction sent by Cheney and Dubya and Rummy to blast already destitute and deeply oppressed foreign countries into submission so that Bush & Co. can lay some pipe and their oil crony pals can stop salivating at the prospect of a newly gutted Iraq and actually get in there and make some billions. This is the true reality.
I very much enjoy watching the Blue Angels. It was a truly gorgeous day. They were majestic and amazing and the talent and skill required to pilot those aircraft is astounding and impressive and the awe they impart is rare and strange and fascinating and disturbing. But.
Of course everyone knows these planes are weapons of war, but few of us perhaps truly imagine the powerlessness of those under attack, imagine the victims of these huge and glistening and sun-kissed and biggerfasterdeadlierthanyours fighters, these insanely destructive jets, the sheer unbridled terror, what is must be like for the people, the civilians, the families and neighborhoods and babies in strollers, every day, for months on end.
Maybe the Blue Angels could serve as just such a reminder. After all, a little profound and heartfelt, unclouded American empathy could be just what this nation needs.