A Few Good War Games

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What do I think about the connection between war and popular culture? Well, I think that it can be a bad thing because simply we are teaching our kids to hate and to kill. We see it everywhere, I mean lets face it the Government is controlling our life’s by propaganda everything and everywhere. You see it in ads on TV, movies, video games, music, etc. This is nonsense and it needs to stop.

There can be so many bad things about popular culture and war mix together that can destroy people’s lives or other countries around the world. The first thing that comes to mind is the recruiting process. You see ads on TV that reads, “NAVY Accelerate Your Life,” and you think to yourself well that’s awesome. I can join the Navy and it can do more for me in life than collage will ever do. Well, that is wrong in some since. All I am saying is that they can do it, but in a certain way. They can use and show some of the good stuff and some of the bad stuff that goes along with it. Then they can see how it works. Movies, video games, and music works the same way.

The first thing that come to my mind when popular culture and war mix with movies is in “Forrest Gump,” when Forrest graduates from collage and you see a army recruit telling Forrest, “Have you give any thought to your future?” Even though that the movie is based back in the 1960’s, but back of my mind I think that this is so stupid because it is destroying people’s lives. I mean some people can go on and become doctors, lawyers, or anything else. On the other hand, you can become a doctor or a lawyer in the military, but very rarely on the outside world you won’t get shot at or worse get killed. Music and video games are almost the same thing. After 9/11 we hear, mostly in country music, about the military or about joining the military. Video games as become more realistic over the years, but it is still propaganda by the military. So, as you can see propaganda is everywhere.

For sure movies like, “Top Gun,” “A Few Good Men,” and “Band of Brothers” all are great movies and I like them, but that doesn’t make me want to join the military to kill or to hate. It makes me want to join because it is fun to fly a fighter jet or be a lawyer in the military. But there is a military side and a Hollywood side to those moves. The military side is that you should join the military because you can become a Top Gun or a top Navy JAG lawyer. They don’t tell you the bad side of it. The Hollywood side is all fun because in “Top Gun” there is no jet called MIG 28, you don’t fly by the tower, or you don’t take showers after you fly. It is a sports movie instead. So, the military is trying to tell you that it is all fun and games, plus exciting, but not deadly like “Band of Brothers” shows, which is Hollywood, but different in some ways.

As you can see that I do not like the idea that the military/Government is using popular culture to recruit men and women to join the military. To me I just don’t see the idea. I don’t know I might be lost in the 1960’s or something else, but it just doesn’t make since. Why kill someone or even hate someone because they are different? That is a question that I keep telling myself over and over. Fighting and killing doesn’t solve anything. With an old saying from the 1960’s, “Let’s Make Love, Not War,” is a better solution. On the flip side of this there can be some good things about it. Protecting our country and freedom are two good things, plus new technology for our military. On an end note, I saw a TV commercial the other day and it says that you should talk to your son or daughter about joining the military. I think that that is a bad idea because I don’t want to tell my son or daughter at a young age to go out and kill or even hate someone just because they belief in different things or just simply they are different. Now if they are old enough to understand, then I will set them down and talk to them, but not at a young age. And also today I see more and more body bags coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, which tells me that we need to do something about it.