This is pretty long, but fuck it. If you want a short thread, check the news or Zumbi's journal.
THE OPENING
The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal. While interpreted as an all encompassing idea, what it really means is all men should have the same rights under the laws of the land.
All men are not created equal. Due to economic status, genetics, and countless other factors, some men are created with various degrees of a head start compared to their fellow man.
As most of you are aware, a soldier named Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday. Sgt. Tillman was a Ranger, one of 39 men killed in combat in that country, out of 110 total casualties. Some people are making a big deal of Tillmans death. Im one of them and heres why.
Like all events, we bond to the ones that mean more to us. Certain events mean more to us for one main reason; we identify with then. People with children pay more attention when someone elses is kidnapped. People that have had a dog die are more moved when one is run over by a car. While the death of a human and the very act of war should mean something to all of us... in truth, if you havent had a death in your family or you havent been in war, it cant mean as much to you as someone that has. So we get as close as we can.
THE HISTORY
My parents were anti-sport. Neither went to college and their only encounter with High School athletes ended badly. Despite being 6 feet tall and weighing 200 pounds as a sophomore, no thought was ever given to encouraging me to get into sports. I fancied myself a comic artist and general geek, well before it became fashionable. I played Dungeons and Dragons, I watched Star Trek (no need to specify which one... there was only one at the time) and I sat through Star Wars over 20 times... well before it was called A New Hope.
High School came and went and right about that time, I developed an interest in football. As an artist, I was able to see the art in sports. Stereotypically, artist types hate sport, and sports types dont really get artists. In truth, pure sport is an amazing thing. Stripped away from the salaries and posturing (things that exist in the art world as well) sport is an intricate ballet of movement. Football is one of the only true team endeavors. Eleven men, all responsible for a task. And if one fails, all fail.
I love watching plays unfold, I love anticipating angles and hits; watching or playing.
I played semi-pro football for three years and was the perfect model of the slow, but intelligent, white guy. My heroes in the NFL were the hard hitting safeties and linebackers. I cared not for scoring touchdowns... it was all about taking the ball away from the other team... or punishing them for having it. Mike Singletary, David Fulcher, Karl Mecklenburg, Harry Carson and, of course, Ronnie Lott (who had part of his broken finger removed rather than miss a game). Unforgiving artists of destruction. Most were supposedly undersized, or too slow or overshadowed by the Lawrence Taylors of the world. Something, as a tragic artist, I could identify with.
Pat Tillman, as most of you know by now, played safety for the Arizona Cardinals. Pat Tillman was the exact kind of player I could identify with; and as the others retired, he was part of a new crop of players I could follow.
Pat Tillman walked on to his college team. Tillman graduated with a Pac-10 defensive player of the year award and Cumma Sum laude. Thats right, in an age where an athlete needs to be slightly smarter than a trained monkey to pass his SATs and go to school, Tillman was smart, too.
Undersized and too slow, Tillman fell to the 226th pick of the NFL draft. Meaning at least 225 guys where deemed better than him. That's most of them. Arizona took a chance and he rewarded them with a record number of tackles in only the second year of his career. To be honest, as a football guy, I know that the Cardinal defense must have sucked that year. In a perfect world, you want your linebackers to be doing most of the tackles; it leaves the safeties and cornerback fresh for plays downfield. A safety making a lot of tackles means your team is giving up a lot of yardage. But, like me, Tillman didnt care what the score was; he wanted the pure joy of playing.
At the end of his contract, Tillman was offered 9 million dollars to play with the then Super Bowl champion St Louis Rams. He chose loyalty over paycheck. It cost him 6 million dollars. Then, after the events of 9/11, he walked away from a 3 million dollar contract with the Cardinals, to join the Army. Tillman, it seemed, had some moral character, as well.
WHY WE SHOULD CARE
Plenty of people have died in war. Plenty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why should we care? Why does Tillmans death matter more than someone elses?
We live in a world with high priced athletes and a celebrity culture. Whether right or wrong, the media tells us that fame and money are the two things to strive for in our consumer based society.
We live in a culture that tries to scare us into buying or hiding or worrying. We are given brief relief when a man is called a hero or a patriot; two terms that have been thrown around fast and loose lately.
Ill admit it. It took me a little while to recognize the contributions of the firemen and policemen of 9/11. Isnt that a firemans job? To go into burning buildings? Can you be a hero if you dont know a building is going to collapse on you? I hate using the word hero. Im stingy with it.
I came around. Men (and women) should be considered heroes for several reasons. When they go outside their job description is a good one. Burning buildings shouldnt be 100 stories high. Thats outside the job description.
When they have something to loose... something real... and they choose a path where it can get lost. Thats a hero to me.
And patriot? Putting a flag on your SUV doesnt mean dick to me. Did you vote? Do you think about how your job, your day to day life, affects your country? Do you understand the reason you can be a self absorbed asshole is thousands of people died to give and keep you that right?
I said it in an earlier post... its not about having freedom. People have died to give you the right to not participate in the system. And bitch about it.
Pat Tillman didnt grant interviews when he left. He didnt want the attention. Pat Tillman turned his back on millions of dollars for loyalty. He turned his back on millions more dollars for patriotism. Tillman didnt give a fuck what people thought. He had a belief. A duty. A burning need to prove himself by his own standard, not ours.
What have you done? What have I?
Ill admit it. I think the greatest sacrifices are those made by people with the most to lose. Plenty of guys gave up plenty of things to go to war in the Middle East. Plenty have died and their deaths are tragic and their families should be proud. Their sacrifices shouldnt be thought of as less because one guy thinks Tillmans was more. But in a career where Tillman had everything possible at his fingertips, he chose to give it up. In a field where the news covers rapists and drug users and wife beaters and cheaters and crybabies and overpriced children in a mans body; all the fucking awful things that creep into modern sport... Tillman chose the high road... unique.
In World War Two, 90% of professional baseball players quit to go to war after Pearl Harbor. Are we a better world because Tillman and his brother were about the only ones this time? Have we made progress, you think, since then? Are there more heroes or less in that scenario?
On my scale of heroic sacrifice, Tillman gave up the most; thats all there is to it. All things we have... family, wife, friends... and all the things most of us dont have... money, fame... a career he loved. Does this make the other soldiers less heroic? Fuck, no. It makes him more.
Of course, Tillman himself would be embarrassed at the attention.
THE BIG FINISH
Whether or not you agree with the reasoning, Tillmans death will absolutely make the other deaths in this war resonate. Tillmans death is important, goddammit, because he was a Good Man. He was the kind of man fathers want their sons to grow up to. Hes the kind of man you cant use the word guy for. The kind of man that makes me want to climb onto a mountain top and roar my manhood to the world.
Tillman was the kind of man that makes me embarrassed of my life. He is a Hero with a capitol H and a Patriot with a capitol P. He makes me thankful I get to vote, to bitch, to look at naked chicks on the internet and sit on my fat lazy ass and watch him being carried home in a flag draped coffin. Hes the kind of man that makes me hope, truly hope, for the first time in my life, that there is some kind of God(ess). Because he needs to be in Heaven. With a capitol H
Yeah, I admit it. He brought the war home a little harder. He was an artist, like me. But better at it. Tillman was not created equal. Tillman is a better man than me. Hes a better man than most of you. And Im okay with that.
So, to all the soldiers and loved ones and especially to the men who have died I leave this message: Ive always considered myself a patriot... even as a kid... proud. It didnt take a plane to crash into a building to make me realize I loved my country. Id been there all the time. But it took a Man, with a capital M, to die... before I said thank you.
Thank you so much for giving me the privilege to live here... to live my mundane life... while you fight and die. And forgive me for taking so long to say something about it.
I was dumbfounded by everything that was going on. In times like this you stop and think how good we have it. I have always had a great deal of feeling for the flag but you dont realize how great of a life we have over here. In times like this, you think about how good we have it and what kind of a system we live under, what freedoms we are allowed. That wasnt built over night. The flag is a symbol of all that. A lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I havent really done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that so I have a great respect for those that have and what the flag stands for.
Pat Tillman, September 12th, 2001.
THE OPENING
The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal. While interpreted as an all encompassing idea, what it really means is all men should have the same rights under the laws of the land.
All men are not created equal. Due to economic status, genetics, and countless other factors, some men are created with various degrees of a head start compared to their fellow man.
As most of you are aware, a soldier named Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday. Sgt. Tillman was a Ranger, one of 39 men killed in combat in that country, out of 110 total casualties. Some people are making a big deal of Tillmans death. Im one of them and heres why.
Like all events, we bond to the ones that mean more to us. Certain events mean more to us for one main reason; we identify with then. People with children pay more attention when someone elses is kidnapped. People that have had a dog die are more moved when one is run over by a car. While the death of a human and the very act of war should mean something to all of us... in truth, if you havent had a death in your family or you havent been in war, it cant mean as much to you as someone that has. So we get as close as we can.
THE HISTORY
My parents were anti-sport. Neither went to college and their only encounter with High School athletes ended badly. Despite being 6 feet tall and weighing 200 pounds as a sophomore, no thought was ever given to encouraging me to get into sports. I fancied myself a comic artist and general geek, well before it became fashionable. I played Dungeons and Dragons, I watched Star Trek (no need to specify which one... there was only one at the time) and I sat through Star Wars over 20 times... well before it was called A New Hope.
High School came and went and right about that time, I developed an interest in football. As an artist, I was able to see the art in sports. Stereotypically, artist types hate sport, and sports types dont really get artists. In truth, pure sport is an amazing thing. Stripped away from the salaries and posturing (things that exist in the art world as well) sport is an intricate ballet of movement. Football is one of the only true team endeavors. Eleven men, all responsible for a task. And if one fails, all fail.
I love watching plays unfold, I love anticipating angles and hits; watching or playing.
I played semi-pro football for three years and was the perfect model of the slow, but intelligent, white guy. My heroes in the NFL were the hard hitting safeties and linebackers. I cared not for scoring touchdowns... it was all about taking the ball away from the other team... or punishing them for having it. Mike Singletary, David Fulcher, Karl Mecklenburg, Harry Carson and, of course, Ronnie Lott (who had part of his broken finger removed rather than miss a game). Unforgiving artists of destruction. Most were supposedly undersized, or too slow or overshadowed by the Lawrence Taylors of the world. Something, as a tragic artist, I could identify with.
Pat Tillman, as most of you know by now, played safety for the Arizona Cardinals. Pat Tillman was the exact kind of player I could identify with; and as the others retired, he was part of a new crop of players I could follow.
Pat Tillman walked on to his college team. Tillman graduated with a Pac-10 defensive player of the year award and Cumma Sum laude. Thats right, in an age where an athlete needs to be slightly smarter than a trained monkey to pass his SATs and go to school, Tillman was smart, too.
Undersized and too slow, Tillman fell to the 226th pick of the NFL draft. Meaning at least 225 guys where deemed better than him. That's most of them. Arizona took a chance and he rewarded them with a record number of tackles in only the second year of his career. To be honest, as a football guy, I know that the Cardinal defense must have sucked that year. In a perfect world, you want your linebackers to be doing most of the tackles; it leaves the safeties and cornerback fresh for plays downfield. A safety making a lot of tackles means your team is giving up a lot of yardage. But, like me, Tillman didnt care what the score was; he wanted the pure joy of playing.
At the end of his contract, Tillman was offered 9 million dollars to play with the then Super Bowl champion St Louis Rams. He chose loyalty over paycheck. It cost him 6 million dollars. Then, after the events of 9/11, he walked away from a 3 million dollar contract with the Cardinals, to join the Army. Tillman, it seemed, had some moral character, as well.
WHY WE SHOULD CARE
Plenty of people have died in war. Plenty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why should we care? Why does Tillmans death matter more than someone elses?
We live in a world with high priced athletes and a celebrity culture. Whether right or wrong, the media tells us that fame and money are the two things to strive for in our consumer based society.
We live in a culture that tries to scare us into buying or hiding or worrying. We are given brief relief when a man is called a hero or a patriot; two terms that have been thrown around fast and loose lately.
Ill admit it. It took me a little while to recognize the contributions of the firemen and policemen of 9/11. Isnt that a firemans job? To go into burning buildings? Can you be a hero if you dont know a building is going to collapse on you? I hate using the word hero. Im stingy with it.
I came around. Men (and women) should be considered heroes for several reasons. When they go outside their job description is a good one. Burning buildings shouldnt be 100 stories high. Thats outside the job description.
When they have something to loose... something real... and they choose a path where it can get lost. Thats a hero to me.
And patriot? Putting a flag on your SUV doesnt mean dick to me. Did you vote? Do you think about how your job, your day to day life, affects your country? Do you understand the reason you can be a self absorbed asshole is thousands of people died to give and keep you that right?
I said it in an earlier post... its not about having freedom. People have died to give you the right to not participate in the system. And bitch about it.
Pat Tillman didnt grant interviews when he left. He didnt want the attention. Pat Tillman turned his back on millions of dollars for loyalty. He turned his back on millions more dollars for patriotism. Tillman didnt give a fuck what people thought. He had a belief. A duty. A burning need to prove himself by his own standard, not ours.
What have you done? What have I?
Ill admit it. I think the greatest sacrifices are those made by people with the most to lose. Plenty of guys gave up plenty of things to go to war in the Middle East. Plenty have died and their deaths are tragic and their families should be proud. Their sacrifices shouldnt be thought of as less because one guy thinks Tillmans was more. But in a career where Tillman had everything possible at his fingertips, he chose to give it up. In a field where the news covers rapists and drug users and wife beaters and cheaters and crybabies and overpriced children in a mans body; all the fucking awful things that creep into modern sport... Tillman chose the high road... unique.
In World War Two, 90% of professional baseball players quit to go to war after Pearl Harbor. Are we a better world because Tillman and his brother were about the only ones this time? Have we made progress, you think, since then? Are there more heroes or less in that scenario?
On my scale of heroic sacrifice, Tillman gave up the most; thats all there is to it. All things we have... family, wife, friends... and all the things most of us dont have... money, fame... a career he loved. Does this make the other soldiers less heroic? Fuck, no. It makes him more.
Of course, Tillman himself would be embarrassed at the attention.
THE BIG FINISH
Whether or not you agree with the reasoning, Tillmans death will absolutely make the other deaths in this war resonate. Tillmans death is important, goddammit, because he was a Good Man. He was the kind of man fathers want their sons to grow up to. Hes the kind of man you cant use the word guy for. The kind of man that makes me want to climb onto a mountain top and roar my manhood to the world.
Tillman was the kind of man that makes me embarrassed of my life. He is a Hero with a capitol H and a Patriot with a capitol P. He makes me thankful I get to vote, to bitch, to look at naked chicks on the internet and sit on my fat lazy ass and watch him being carried home in a flag draped coffin. Hes the kind of man that makes me hope, truly hope, for the first time in my life, that there is some kind of God(ess). Because he needs to be in Heaven. With a capitol H
Yeah, I admit it. He brought the war home a little harder. He was an artist, like me. But better at it. Tillman was not created equal. Tillman is a better man than me. Hes a better man than most of you. And Im okay with that.
So, to all the soldiers and loved ones and especially to the men who have died I leave this message: Ive always considered myself a patriot... even as a kid... proud. It didnt take a plane to crash into a building to make me realize I loved my country. Id been there all the time. But it took a Man, with a capital M, to die... before I said thank you.
Thank you so much for giving me the privilege to live here... to live my mundane life... while you fight and die. And forgive me for taking so long to say something about it.
I was dumbfounded by everything that was going on. In times like this you stop and think how good we have it. I have always had a great deal of feeling for the flag but you dont realize how great of a life we have over here. In times like this, you think about how good we have it and what kind of a system we live under, what freedoms we are allowed. That wasnt built over night. The flag is a symbol of all that. A lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I havent really done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that so I have a great respect for those that have and what the flag stands for.
Pat Tillman, September 12th, 2001.
VIEW 18 of 18 COMMENTS
you dont know me, and ive never happened across you on this site before, either. I just finnished reading what you wrote about Pat Tillman. I wept. I am unsure if its because i decided a short time ago to stop taking my medication, but i think its because something about Pat's sacrifice touched me.
I live in Australia, and though in a country some of us consider to be the 51st state, we dont get the same sort of coverage on the news about the war. We get intelligence officials coming out saying that someone lied about what we knew before sending troops into the middle east. We get our leader of out opposition party telling us that if elected later this year he will have our troops home by Christmas. Sound familiar? Someone made a similar promise just before elections in Spain, and look what happened there.
It recently made the paper that some prick cant be taken to court for burning the Australian flag at a 'peace protest'. I think of coffins bringing our loved ones home draped in that flag (none in the current conflicts yet, we only have a few thousand military deplyed... but its all we could spare), and it makes me angry that theres those over here that want to change our national flag not in spite of the thousands that died defending the flag and everything it stande for, but because of it.
And then i think of myself, of my life, and the astonishingly little that ive made of myself. It hurts to compare myself to someone like Pat Tillman. He was ten times more a man than i will ever be. So is each and every one of those of our people that put their life on the line. For the flag. For freedom. To fight the good fight, and to protect people like us from having to live in fear of another 9/11, another Bali bombing, another tyrant that hates the western world rising to power.
I apologise for the disjointedness of this, i just needed to get some of this off my chest.
God bless America
God save the Queen
Thank Christ for Australia