The jingoistic uproar over American Sniper is frightening. If you dare to criticize this hero then you hate the troops and you hate America, baseball, apple pie and your mother. Because of the popularity of this work of fiction, threats against Muslims have skyrocketed. Many people who see the film are too lazy or stubborn to research the truth -- which is that Chris Kyle was a deeply flawed man broken by our military and the constant pressures of war, brainwashed to become a cold-hearted, remorseless killing machine. The traits that made him a great sniper made him a terrible human being, not a hero. He clearly suffered from delusions of grandeur, and these fantasies became the basis for a series of lies -- one of which cost his estate $1.8 million in a defamation suit. His delusions also probably got him, and another vet, killed. What in the world was he thinking bringing a vet suffering from PTSD to a gun range? Whether he was a creep before joining the military, or the military turned him into a creep, hes not the kind of person we should hold up as a hero. Why is this guy, a sniper who kills from hundreds of yards away, a more deserving hero than the GIs who come face-to-face with danger? The larger question here is, why do we psychologically need to fabricate war heroes? Does it make us feel better about supporting an unjust war?
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 14:39:29 +0000
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