New Era - Old Era

When pundits blab. When bloggers blog. When columnists spew. It's all just words. It's just jargon. It's just giving people what they want.

This is My Word At Large. I give people what they need to hear. This is my word.

I don't normally watch the military channel. I don't really think of myself as a very aggressive person. But, yesterday, I Tivo'ed a show on that channel that blew my mind. I was, quite frankly, stunned. The episode carefully depicted to the gruesomest details the fight for the Atoll islands in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

That was a war you could get behind. A war you could talk to your friends, parents, brothers, minister about. It felt right to the bone.

It made you sink into the back of your seat with an angry, nauseous knot in your stomach. Believe me you didn't change the channel during the commercials, you didn't even move.

This Iraq war. I'm not so sure I could say the same thing. Sure, I think there are good reasons to be there. But, to be honest, there are a lot of bad ones too. It's a huge question.

That's exactly the point though. A war should be vital. You should feel it pulsing through your veins. It should not be debated or half-hearted.

Perhaps this is a silly proposition, but I believe a war should make for the most enthralling programming every conceived because it should be unconditionally burned in the back of our minds. It should grip us in the same way that those Spartans felt standing at Thermopylae staring at the invading Persian masses.

As for me, I might just flip on the Military Channel again tonight.