all our fears fall on deaf ears tonight.

I went to see the USS Intrepid, or maybe it's just the intrepid, I'm not sure. It's a retired naval battleship if you couldn't guess from the name that enjoyed a rather notorious run during world war II when it sustained five kamikaze attacks and several torpedos during a battle which was not named specifically at the museum. I went because I had to, before you all start assuming I'm into world war II which would be the worst assumption anybody could possibly make about me. I have to write a paper on it now and turn it in the monday after thanksgiving, shouldn't be too hard and I was looking foward to going until I got there and they had a piece of paper on the window to the main entrance indidcating that the flight deck was closed due to inclement weather.

That's just great. The whole reason I wanted to go was to see that stupid flight deck, to stand on its mighty surface and take in the majestic view of the city would have been something nice right? Instead I got gray skies, lots of rain, and a museum with dummy soldiers that really freaked me out (more on that later). Or maybe I'll talk about right now, as soon as I stepped into the museum (which is sort of located in the vital organs section of the ship itself) I felt like I was walking into a graveyard. I got the eerie feeling that this was a ship of ghosts, everything felt very much lived in, even though no one has seen the inside of this ship during battle for well over two decades. The replica/original air craft they stowed inside the museum had these dummy soldiers re-enacting bomb loading procedures, and while they were by no means life like they had a supernatural quality to them that could only be described as someone being turned into a statue by a spell. The memorial inside the ship with all the names of the men who died while serving on it, did not feel like it was honoring the end of their lives, but rather honoring the lives they had on the ship. The warm yet distant nostalgic memory photos of the men living their routine lives on board were so heartbreaking because you forget sometimes that these men lived with each other and not just the enemy for years at a time.

I swear it felt like their voices still echoed through the engine rooms, then I looked up and saw that it was just chatter coming from the mess hall sponsored by McDonalds. Yes, those brave souls certainly fought and died protecting our freedom, our freedom to eat toxic chemical sludge. I'm sorry that's very simplistic and general, but I can't help myself, couldn't they have hired some mom and pop store to be their lunch supplier, did it have to be mcdonalds? It's just a little hard to swallow when you're walking around this historic and epic battleship only to see a sign suggesting that I "Eat chow just like the soldiers did in the McDonalds mess hall." It really took me out of the whole experience, and it cheapened the museum a little bit. Besides aren't there like ten mickey d's in times square alone? DId they really need to spread the seed of their evil empire all the way out to the west side highway? I guess they did and they must have known that history buffs get extra hungry when visiting naval landmarks.

Something else that I found really interesting about the musuem, was the small but nicely ogranized section examining the lives of the Japanese soldiers (no Germans were profiled but I guess that's because Americans did most of the naval battling with Japan). It didn't really examine their lives actually, more like what they were like when they were bombing the American ships. They talked about the Kamikaze pilots and how the idea behind it was not only complete and utter anihilation of enemy combatants, but also that coupled with the glory of self sacrifice for the Nation of people you were defending. It's an interesting paradox to consider, on one hand there's the idea of a shared sacrifice, that your death will be felt by every single person living in the nation you have sworn to protect for the rest of their lives. On the other, your sole desire is to kill and destroy every living thing that is unfortunate enough to be in the closest shade of existance of your enemy soldiers. It's like you have your noble purpose and your kill crazy psychotic purpose and which was the motivating one? And when I say noble I just want to clarify that while I think there is some nobility in sacrificing one's life for the lives of others, that nobility (in the case of the kamikaze) is earned as a battle sacrifice. I don't revel in battle or war of any kind, but if you are engaged in one and you act heroically it should be recognized. The point of all this was that its hard to make the distinction between a noble sacrifice and a senseless slaughter even if it is in the name of protecting the freedom of a nation. How do you justify it to yourself? Do you even have a choice in the matter?

Something else about the Japanese portion of the exhibit that troubled me a little bit: There were two items housed on display, one was a mock business card that read "Official Jap Hunter" with a sub head line that read "Open for Business" or something along those lines. In the little description panel next to the item the words read something like "This card represents the dehumanizing effects of war and the animosity that existed on both sides in the fight for the pacific." Those weren't the exact words but you get the idea, then I walk over a few feet to see a japanese flag, completely unfurled and six different stains each with a hole through them adorning the permiter of the flag. The inscription next to it read that it belonged to a japanese soldier who met his end during the battle for Iwo Jima, the flag had the stains on it because the bullet pierced through it on the way to the Japanese soldier's heart. The flag must have been folded up several times, which is why the stain repeats itself over and over again. I hope that makes sense because it was a really haunting image, this piece of cloth was the last thing that bullet past through on its way to a human body of a Japanese soldier. Anyway, an American took it off the body and wrote with a pen "stolen from a dead jap" and put the date. I was struck by this only because on the inscription next to it, after explaining where the flag came from, it read once again This flag represents the dehumanizing effects of war and the animosity that excisted on both sides in the fight for the pacific." It just made me think to myself that if they have this standard boilerplate response to two completely different representations of war time racism. Then do they think those feelings of hatred are not only natural but expected of a soldier during war time, that it's just this blanket phenomenon that happens whether you want it to or not? During world war II I definitely believed that kind of thing happened to a lot of soldiers, but it is troulbing to me that this musuem dealt with it in a slogan rather than any kind of real insight. They didnt' bother to explore the roots and causes of this problem, they just wrote it off as part of the dehumanization of war. You rarely read about men who fought in the war who were real bastards, everyone sort of becomes these saintly do gooders when they strap on those boots.

There is plenty more to talk about, I have some pictures but my flickr account is full and I don't know how to put pictures just on blogspot by itself. And I don't feel like learning either. It's getting dark now, and I'm reallly gonna try...

"The rungs torn from the ladder can't reach the tumour
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer

Just a quiet peaceful dance!

Just a quiet peaceful dance for the things we'll never have."