'Friendly Fire' and fatuous fibbing, part.1
I know it's characteristic of ageing to develop a chronic and increasingly deep-seated pessimism / cynicism about everything that goes on around you. And yes, I admit, I'm heading in that direction. My wife Ginny tells me that's "because you don't have enough to do." By which she means, I'm assuming, that retirement's giving me too much time, and, thus, opportunity, to sit and brood over stuff I can't do anything about anyway. The growing severity of the world's "population explosion," for instance.
Well, maybe so. Maybe if I worked harder at "StoneHouse Perennials," watering the endless rows of hostas, and producing the labels that I eventually attach to the black plastic pots that contain those lovely puppies, maybe if I worked harder to actually impart to our customers some fact(s) that might help them defeat the marauding bunnies that cause so much heartache when they invade en masse, instead of just regaling them (our customers, not the bunnies) with wise cracks and botanical puns, I'd have no time to brood on the earth's decline into barbarism and nihilism.
But I don't think so.
Last night (Monday, Aug. 16), just as I was preparing to follow up my uncharacteristically up-beat editorial on the late Ken Postlethwaite with a rosy and smiling tribute to another admirable elderly Nevadan, this one still breathing, I happened to notice that Larry King, on CNN, was delving into the fairly recent and sad story of Pat Tillman. That cartoon-hero-handsome NFL player had been rocked by the carnage of 9/11, and, turning in the key to his locker, volunteered for the armed services, apparently for the most selfless reasons, and until 2006, found himself fighting the enemy in Afghanistan.
Then, sometime later that same year, out on patrol in that same god-forsaken country, accompanied by two of his buddies, Tillman alone came under fire from soldiers whose faces, one of the two interviewed on King's show recalled clearly, were familiar to him. These two young men were, they said, no more than 30 yards from where Tillman stood ... and fell. They saw it all ... or, at least, they said they saw the immediate aftermath.
Who shot Pat Tillman? Who knows? Who will ever know?
"Friendly fire." It's one of those cutesy, carefully devised terms meant to defuse or cosmeticize a grim reality. An example of this disturbing and prevailing modern tendency that comes immediately to mind is the term "War Department," the term commonly accepted, without a peep, since the launching of our country until, I believe, shortly after World War II. Then, suddenly, the War Department officially became known as the "Department of Defense," which, you'll agree, sounds a lot less war-mongering. And "Department of Defense" it's remained, ironically, as the U.S. has become more and more war-mongering. Ironic? Yeah. Want to read more on this and other linguistic trends? Read George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language," my candidate for the 20th century's most eye-opening essay in English. Every student should be made to read it, then pass an essay test on its meaning after he / she is through. Can't be duped and led around by someone's skillful use of language? Read Orwell, and you'll change your mind. He knew different.
But, sorry, let's get back to our topic -- the killing of American Ranger Pat Tillman. Ranger Tillman had two alert and articulate parents (both of whom appeared on Larry King's TV show on Monday, Aug. 16), so when they got official word from their government that their son Pat had perished while bravely defending his country against terrorists like the ones who destroyed New York City's Twin Towers and the human beings who worked inside them, they grieved but accepted his death as the price the boy knew he might have to pay for his voluntary enlistment in the U.S. Army
Case closed? Shucks, not hardly. Shortly thereafter, if not the same day, Mr. and Mrs. Tillman received a second letter from the Department of Defense, explaining that their son had died from that cruel enigma, "friendly fire." Writers of the two letters should clearly have got together and meshed their stories before sending out a single letter.
To be continued.