March 6, 2014

Today was a really tough lesson, dealing with the reality of war.
We watched excerpts from the film "Gallipoli". It's not like a Disney movie, which you can watch half-heartedly and forget within a few weeks. "Gallipoli" is a movie that will stay with you for your entire life.
"Gallipoli" deals with World War 1, specifically the Australian contribution to the battle at Gallipoli. The movie stars two young Australian sprinters who sign up for the war. One wants to fight, while the other was simply bored.
I cannot describe this movie. This movie will mess with your emotions. It's a film that is absolutely worth watching.
Occasionally, Mr. P. would have us pause and discuss what had happened. We saw a prime example of propaganda when a woman in the film spouted out that the Germans were crucifying kittens on church doors. She most likely got this from newspapers that were spreading lies about Germany in order to make Australians hate Germany and want to fight in the war against Germany.
The propaganda certainly worked. When a desert hermit asked the blonde sprinter why the war was happening, he answered: "I don't know, but it's the German's fault." The blonde sprinter was not there when the war was declared and has probably never spoken to someone on the German side. He only knows what the propagandists in Australia and Britain want him to know. The worst thing is, he didn't question the information, just like people nowadays don't question any information given to them. They eat it up without any second thoughts.
At the end of the movie, the blonde sprinter dies. The film ends there, like life ends when you get shot and fall. It doesn't have a happy ending. War doesn't have a happy ending. War ends in people dying needlessly. Why do people go to war? Propaganda. Propaganda, peer pressure, transfer, conformity, and many other reasons end in people enlisting in the war. Do you know what happens to those people? They die. They run straight into battle and die. They're life is taken away by a few bullets fired by people who are just as scared as the dying soldiers on the battlefield.
Nobody really wants to be there. That's the thing about war: nobody ever really wants to be there. They might think that they want to be there when they enlist, they might think that they're ready, but the moment they are on the battlefield and about to go off and die, they realize they made the biggest and last mistake of their lives.
Propaganda is dangerous, war is stupid, and lives are wasted by people who have too much power and do not value human lives.
"Murder of 1 Million=Statistic... Murder of 1=Tragedy." - Stalin. Consider this the next time you look at how many people died in a war. Think about those people. All of them had lives. All of them had families, friends, people who cared about them, people they care about. Every last one of them had a future before they entered the war. Once they enlisted and left home, their future was taken away. Their lives were over before they set foot on the battlefield.

-I