To Make the World Safe for Democracy?

Woodrow Wilson was really an idealist. Not that I'm against idealism, but one must reckon with one's own idealism, knowing what virtue it intends as its goal. Wilson, of course, was a Princeton, Enlightenment scholar. His "common good," I daresay, is not the same common good I strive towards. I, for one, see the common good as eternal communion with the virtue - God, who is "The Good". Well, anyway, democracy is not the eschatological hope. It is not that place where "we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise" (to coin a great Wesley hymn). So why am I going on about this? I watched Jarhead last night. My good friends, Bo and Bud, were with me. It is a disturbing look at the psychological effects of military conditioning. What happens, the movie begs, when one is programmed to kill, to be ok with killing, and to want to kill, but is denied the opportunity to kill? These young marines are trained, nay, re-programmed to desire killing, almost as a sexual release. There is a very telling scene when the marines are gathered to watch a scene from "Apocolypse Now." It's the scene when the helicopters are coming into the Vietnamese village to lay it waste. Civilian Vietnamese people (many children) are slaughtered on screne. The marines yell and screme at the movie they are watching, not in horror, but in eager anticipation. It's almost orgiastic. The main character in the film expresses on his face the look of a man caught up in the ecstasy of sex as he watches people being gunned down. This is what the marine corps did to these young men. It made them into killing machines who craved death. But, the conflict in the film is that they are denied their orgasm. The main character is trained as a sniper and goes to the Persian Gulf (Gulf War I). However, he never fires a shot. He almost gets to kill someone, but is denied that pleasure. The end of the war shows marines dancing and partying around a giant fire in the desert, shooting their guns into the air - shooting at nothing. It's ironic. They shoot. This is what they are supposed to do, what they are formed to do, yet they shoot at nothing. Ultimately, this is not the release they desire. They want to kill, but they can't. The death is inside themselves. Very disturbing, especially since I have a brother in the Marine Corps.