Jingo Gods

 

Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

While cleaning out some ancient files on random flash drives, I came across some old email promoting wing nut propaganda from a day in the early days of war in the Middle East. The predominant message that day featured a photograph of a wounded soldier giving an over-the-shoulder finger to invisible insurgents. Below the photo, an account of the soldier’s heroism and a brief history of past bravery, ending with a reminder that God was on our side. Eat it, insurgents!

I paused over the image for a moment. “I am impotent in the face of you’re your rage,” it said. The maudlin sentimentality of the caption did not show through the electronic photograph. I saw an image of a wounded warrior fighting back with the last act of the defeated- an obscene gesture. This is not the stuff of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the charge up San Juan Hill, or the storming of the beaches at Normandy. The image conveyed instead anger, frustration, failure.

The soldier’s wounds had been pixilated out of the photo. I saw only bare skin under the torn clothing. He does not even face the enemy he insults, but tosses the gesture over his shoulder. The caption might just have well read, “Retreating troops offer last act of defiance.”

Today, the two sides continue call upon their regional and national gods to support the goodness of their respective causes, I think of a line from Father Thomas Merton: “The love of a disinterested god.” The universal God had been forgotten by both sides to favor the jingo gods of nationalist fervor. “God bless our troops. Allahu Akbar.” If we win, we lose. The minor gods of our smallest minds will prevail. If we lose, we lose. The minor god of the enemy will have invaded our thoughts. In either event, the Omniscient God will be eclipsed by the angry god of righteous retribution and revenge.

We have stopped, for now, the disgusting practice of using the military to promote our political and religious ideologies. I can only hope it is a continuing non-practice.

Whether we embrace the Universal consciousness, or the regional deity; hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin*, we must win. We can sort out the conflicting concepts of our gods some other time.

* From the National Lampoon song, “Deteriorata,” by Tony Hendra. See https://web.archive.org/web/20150511234144/http://www.joke-archives.com/poetry/deteriorata.html

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