Fighter Jets in Dayton by Carole Ganim Nelson

My recent (8/16/10) Letter to the Editor of the Dayton Daily News provoked a number of responses, supportive, antagonistic, and patronizing. In my letter, I criticized the display of fighter jets in downtown Dayton. I said we should not glorify weapons of destruction, teach children to decorate them and make them art, and then display them in our public places.

The reactions of those who agree with me come from three kinds of people: 1, those who are “peaceniks,” who believe in the struggle for human kindness and peace and who cannot comprehend the need for conflict and war that our society seems to want. They, like me, do not accept the militaristic world in which we find ourselves and they don’t want their children growing up thinking that war is a daily event; 2, those who believe that military strength and power are realities in our world and that we should find a way to harness that power; and 3, those who want our power and might to remain supreme , unquestioned and without sanction in our world.

The reactions of those who disagree are both interesting and comical. Some are ad hominem: the writer is a crazy left-over hippie in a long peasant skirt smoking dope outside the tent of her commune, or she is a befuddled remnant romantic who cannot understand the importance of conquering the enemy lest he destroy us. Others argue that we must defeat the enemies of our country.

The reactions of those who agree quickly expand the argument to its sub-text: war is evil, insidious and a basis for human society and we must not promote it, but eliminate it from our world cultures.

What quickly got lost in the argument is the children. Teaching children that fighter jets are objects of veneration and asking them to prettify them demystifies the truth of the purpose and function of fighter jets and makes them another form of decoration. Soon they will be bookmarks, Christmas ornaments, T shirt logos, key ring bobbles, cute attachments to the paraphernalia toted around by kids and youth.  Cute is in; even fighter jets can be cute. The commodification of the fighter jet has limitless possibilities, both totemic and commercial. But art is truth and truth is not always pop art. We falsify the purpose of fighter jets by making them cute; rather the art of portraying fighter jets should get to the meaning and purpose of what a fighter jet is and show it in its raw essence.

The objection to the fighter jet as decoration and art is really a symbol of a larger argument as both sides recognize. That the jets are displayed as art on the streets of a large city is deplorable, but inevitable. They are, in fact, icons of our cultural values: conquest, war, and what Henry A. Giroux calls “economic Darwinism.  As a theater of cruelty and a mode of public pedagogy, economic Darwinism undermines all forms of solidarity while simultaneously promoting the logic of unrestricted individual responsibility.”

In other words, we as a society have ingested and incorporated into our body and soul the idea that we are entitled to survive, and we must do whatever is necessary to do so. Unfortunately, survival in our world means that one group conquer another group and continue on until that one group is superior to all. I am sorry that I was born into time and place of my country’s dominance in the world. That dominance has only increased in my lifetime and is now threatened. Being born into the time of history when our country is the richest and most powerful in the world, I and we take this as our due, rest secure in our prosperity and comfort, and feel that we are intrinsically superior to the rest of the globe and that we must preserve our superiority at any cost. The reactions to the threats of change are producing unprecedented combative, angry, fearful responses. We think we are entitled to be dominant and that we must protect and defend our way of life at any cost. This is often called patriotism. To many, patriotism means military might and war. After all, our whole economy is built on war. I too have friends and relatives in the military and/or its cohorts. I do not want them to lose their jobs; I do not want to be taken over by another country or by rabid terrorists.  But the conclusion that many reach is that we have to get our fighter jets in the air and wave our flag and kill the enemy and preserve our marvelous country and way of life. I get it. I get it, but I don’t want it. It’s phony, immoral, sentimental, hypocritical and mad.

Carole Ganim Nelson is a writer, professor, and member of Christ Church, Dayton