Just ask yourself what the public perception would have been if, say, we had had live up-to-the-minute coverage of D-day,
When I ask my inlaws about this, they reply that people had such a strong belief in the moral rightness of that war, there was more tolerance for loss. While I believe that the delay in reporting back then offered a certain cushion to the reality, in an odd way it seems to me that we have been protected from this war's reality also, despite the realtime coverage. We aren't growing Victory Gardens, rationing, struggling to offer our own small sacrifices. Instead, the war machine gets fed by the future and we can- in fact, I would say we are encouraged to--ignore much of the cost today. Only the loss of our young people brings it home to us, and didn't the gov't try to shield us from that reality also when they didn't want the pictures of all those flag-draped coffins being shown?
There is a difference between criticizing and carping. We need to criticize. We need to know when liberties are taken with the truth, when we are manipulated, and we need to object loudly to this- regardless of where we stand politically. My objection is to the carpers
(if that's a word) whose complaining become an end in itself and who have no real goal of educating others or contemplating a change for themselves. |
