I'm shaking my head. I hope others will, too.

I have been viewing a lot of documentary shows (go figure - I'm from Canada, eh?) that have interviews with WWII Veterans. In particular, I have watched a LOT of shows that deal with aircraft.

On the History Channel (U.S. Channel), a regular series airs, called "Dogfights," and lately the shows are quite intriguing to me (the technology) - however - they are also very (the dialogue) horrific.

As I listen to the 'vets' talk about shooting down 'craft' from the air, intricate aerial maneouvres with extremely expensive equipment, it is terrible to note that when 'human beings' are mentioned at all in these shows - the humans become 'objects.'

Other-country pilots become 'the guy' or 'the pilot' or, more often, 'the target,' meaning craft and enemy pilot combined.

Now, I'm not quite sure that people will 'get' my meaning here, so I'll be very plain and carry a large hammer...

Expensive and complex technology back in the 1920's, 30's, 40's and upward was designed for the sole purpose of killing...and after all is said and done - after people are quite aware of the destruction caused by machinery, military, war, battles, etc., entire nations GLORIFY acts of war.

Glory in the massacre of countless people - and in the World Wars, a very drastic shift in technology - an 'improvement' (???!!!) that made mass annhilation of people possible at an even more alarming rate than ever before...

Movies like Top Gun further glorify what it might be like to be an 'ace' pilot, a 'hot shot,' risk-taking pilot with an eventual future in military combat.

"War Film" is much more than a movie category or genre - "War Film" is split into a whole myriad of sub-genres that are quite particular. I tried to do a search online to narrow down "War Film" titles in order to provide some examples here, however, the number of films in this general category are just staggering. Hence, the lame reference to a 'popular culture' movie and box office hit, Top Gun. During my search, In most of the titles that I recognized or for films/movies I felt sure I had seen before, what I recalled of the 'themes' in the movies were related to 'glory,' kinds of 'martyr' behaviors, a lot of 'self-sacrificing.' (Tom Cruise is also in another show about patriotism and war, aptly named "Glory"!).

What has the self-sacrificing been about? Why do we glority a certain kind of killing when our jails in North America (and elsewhere) are full of people that we say cannot be out in the general public because they steal too many cars and have a habitual behavior over acquiring objects not their own?

There are also, sitting in jail, a lot of people who kill people...yet war 'vets' who killed people have received awards for their actions and behaviors.

"We/human beings" revise 'how it was' to tell people like me, who were not there, what WWI and WWII were like. Apparently, if the tales are to believed, the world wars were both horrible and a wonderful, glorious series of events all at the same time!

My biggest question about this offering of mostly 'glory-stories' is:

Just because I wasn't there - is it truly RIGHT for me, ETHICAL for me, to believe in and feel strongly (positive) about the 'glory' of mass destruction and bloodshed that occurred at the turn of the century in which I was born?

War isn't about freedom and people.

War in this age is about dehumanizing people (the enemy) so much that the attacker doesn't have to think about human beings much at all.

War in this age is about smashing technology, 'deploying' weapons, dealing with computerized equipment, pushing buttons.

War in a slightly earlier age, during the World Wars was a turning point in the dehumanizing of people. Many soldiers no longer had to march up within arms' reach of the enemy, look into the enemy eyes, then physically perform the action of killing a person.

During WWI military were able to 'launch' weapons and kill people from a much farther distance away. It became possible to kill people from ground, air AND sea all at the same time. Particularly with air and sea attacks, attackers rarely saw their victims. The attackers mainly aimed at 'objects' like aircraft, submarines, land masses, and so 'war' became less about people and more about objects.

Unfortunately, people INSIDE aircraft, submarines, military bases on the ground - these people all became part of the 'target object' and some attackers rarely had to see the instant-effects of their attack actions with all of the newest machinery and technology.

Luckily, we have progressed beyond all of the now outdated machinery and equipment of the global wars and it is possible for people to kill enemies on a mass scale from the comforts of an indoor location - by turning a dial, flicking a switch and depressing a certain button...all in proper sequence, of course.

I will be called 'disrespectful' for writing this hub.

So be it.

I don't want to follow in the particular footsteps my Grandparents' generation were forced to make. The pathway was made too narrow and along the route, destruction, fear and trauma were all seemingly unavoidable and abundant.

Perhaps my only way to avoid repeating certain mistakes and to be a decent person is to absolutely REFUSE TO PERPETUATE the 'beliefs' about war being about freedom. Perhaps the only way to make 'change' is just to avoid being 'another one' who shouts and hollers in patriotic fashion about the glory of past 'war heroes' and events.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but my Grandparents' generation delivered to them many things they did not ask for - called Global Warfare. In domino action, events from my Grandparents' time led to a kind of fear in my generation that my Grandparents were partly either immune to or numbed out about.

My 'brothers,' friends, cousins, etc., did not go to war, hold rifles or muskets in their hands with intent to kill the enemy. My brothers, friends and cousins sat motionless, in shock, as it dawned on us that - sitting in West-Canada, we could be annhilated simply by a technological MISTAKE...

From technology specifically designed for even more advanced warfare. Nuclear weaponry, 'remote' nuclear bombs, etc. Some of our Grandparents assured us that if World War 3 ever began, it would be somewhat of a blessing and that with the new technology and weaponry "around now-a-days" we would never know what hit us and THIS would be drastically more HUMANE than WWI and WWII were!

Since that time, I've grown up without WWIII ever having occurred. Instead, what I've witnessed on the news, in the papers, throughout my entire life are reports of war from around the globe - CONSTANTLY. War with new weapons, even biological weapons - these are living-organisms designed to kill people.

No, I do not want to take on the same attitude that my Grandparents' generation has had about war. I don't believe that their ideas of 'glory' or 'freedom' or 'casualties' mean the same things at all in THIS generation. How can these things possibly mean the same thing now? We're not talking about B-52 Bombers and The A-Bomb anymore...we're talking about weaponry that can reach anywhere around the world from remote control...and we're talking about weaponry that is 'living' as an organism that is designed to destroy another living organism - human beings.

I think perhaps we'd better get off the pathway we're on and find a new route.

Each movie/film that comes out that glorifies war is a REVISION. No sane individuals who understand the destruction and scope of any kind of war would actually perpetuate that war is about glory, in my opinion.

Nobody can doubt that war is heinous and traumatic, so 'we' revise it in order to make it slightly more palatable.

Our minds do NOT get around 'war' very easily, so we create HEROES to explain that 'war is worth it,' that 'war has purpose.' however war is still about dehumanizing the enemy and is ABOUT POWER and the INABILITY to problem solve.

A lot of 'war' is directly related to 'history' itself - old ties, old egos, ancient customs, old grudges, etc.

When an individual whose life has become unmanageable is absolutely REQUIRED to make changes for the better, the individual is often advised to look at the past intensely, with brutal honesty, and learn where mistakes and bad behaviors have occurred. Then, the individual is told to STOP REPEATING THE SAME OLD MISTAKES.

To bring tactics like this to a higher level, it would require a lot of people to deal HONESTLY with the events of the past, and this - is likely quite impossible for mass numbers of people to do.

To consider what truth is, I suppose we need to compare 'versions' of the past, 'versions' of war, and then make decisions on which versions are most sound and logical.

Certainly, many versions that include 'heroes' will be attractive, however, how far will we go to call these versions 'the truth'?

We re-visit versions of war in school textbooks again and again, a process that takes most people through about 12 or 13 years of re-visited "Memorial Days" with focus on historical materials during certain annual observances. The Canadian textbooks say different things than the American textbooks, all written on the same events. British version say different things than Canadian and American books, too. Mostly, for each location, the textbooks make the associated nation appear 'the best' - and for this, we have a name: "Revisionist" versions.

Truth doesn't seem to matter, even in our 'Western' educational systems. What seems to matter the most is the level of comfort the public requires in order to feel that their country's involvement in global warfare has been 'more okay' than certain other national involvements.

We go on, generally, after school years - and perpetuate revisionist history versions.

For more about the concept of 'revisionist,' see my friend's hub:

How Do We Define Revisionist History?

By Whirling Dervish

My 'tirade hub' here kind of came about after I had read her hub. Afterward, the 'Dogfights' program came on the television, so I had a mind full of 'revisionist' ideas to apply to the show I was viewing.

You be the judge of whether or not this has been a good combination lol