....

[rejectomorph]

This.

Comments

[rhodamine.livejournal.com]

much respect to the deceased.

but, i get very confused when people write things like "thank you for your ultimate sacrifice for our country" and ilk like that.

maximum respect to the dead, dont get me wrong...

im just not so sure- as one replyer put it there- what it is were thankful for in that respect. that another person- one of over a thousand- has died in an unjust and unnecessary war? thats somehow a sacrifice for our country?

i dont get it. how did he sacrifice himself for our country? that question is very hard for me. im not trying to sound glib or argumentative, but i always have trouble with this question...

peace to him, though. for sure.

[rejectomorph]

War, like any other action, requires a narrative to sustain it. Those who commented are telling a story to themselves, the purpose of which is to justify their own convictions. Mike Smith has become a character in that story for each of its tellers. He has been fictionalized and fragmented, because the story is not about him- it is about the tellers of the tales themselves, and their relationship to the world. It is one more way in which truth is the first casualty in a war- or at least in the story I tell about it. Maybe the only fundamental truth in any story is the one implicit in the existence of the story itself: that the human mind cannot tolerate uninterpreted events.