Needed Discomfort

Our tendency to sanitize unpleasantness

I was born in 1963. I grew up watching the Vietnam war coverage on the evening news every night. Morley Safer, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather. We saw the burning of villages, the crying faces of the Vietnamese women and children and old people. We saw the American soldiers struggling to understand a form of war for which they’d never trained, with a goal that seemed un-reachable. It was ugly. We watched body bags being loaded into aircraft carriers, headed for home. Those images were the roots of my inability to understand human beings treatment of one another. I still don’t understand it.

It believe the Vietnam War was the first war that came into our living rooms, not via the radio, but television, showing us the realities and losses, and the government didn’t like it very much. It was hard to make the public support a war that was so intimately a part of our daily lives.

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan nearly twenty years now. We’ve surpassed the amount of time spent in Vietnam, but this war seems to have been sterilized for our comfort. We haven’t seen the wounded returning home, or the coffins being unloaded from the aircraft carriers. We haven’t had to witness the discomfort of American family’s losses, or the faces of the people in other countries for whom our military presence seems a threat, not a promise.

I realize there are safety issues for the troops as GPS can be used against them. But maybe we could temper our hunger for instant information, (which is so ravenous that we can no longer actually absorb a fact before we’re bombarded with newer, more “important” information) we could learn some truths about our country at war. Now don’t assume I am against the members of our military. I respect their service and commitment to an idea of a safe and strong America. I am indebted to them all. Do I want them to go get injured or killed? No.

It seems the majority of Americans don’t like to face unpleasant truths. We seem much more comfortable removing it from our lives, or ignoring it. Don’t like the idea of growing older? We’ve got plastic and botox to mask that from view. Don’t like that picture of yourself? We can modify it to make you look like you’ve been photoshopped for the cover of Vogue. Don’t like news that conflicts with your personal preferences? We’ve got channels with 24-7 talking heads spouting “news” that is aimed at keeping you pleasantly in your bubble. Don’t want to talk about the genocide of Native Americans, or the depth of pain and misuse of the people that were used as slaves to make this country rich? Why don’t we just gloss over those truths in our history books. Don’t want to hear about our young people dying in another country? We won’t show that on television, in case it disturbed or offends you.

It should disturb us. It should teach us something about ourselves. It should be a mirror in which we see our reflection, unmodified. Our country’s past actions won’t go away. We’ve created dictators, toppled regimes to place our puppets on the throne.

So, I wonder what it stems from, this need to abolish uncomfortable truths. Classism? The need to feel superior? What is it that makes us so afraid to face our actions as a country? Does it start with each of us facing our own mistakes? Our personal racism, sexism, classism? Well that’s damn hard. Really difficult. I look at my past ignorance, and instead of shaming myself and hiding from it, I TRY to grow from it, and change. It’s slow. But I hope to continue to face my faults and forgive them, and change.

I love my country. I think, perhaps we need to get our hands dirty, and dig into our failings, and plant something new. Something stronger. Something healing.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world can live as one.”