“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
A convincing argument could be made that human beings are the species that tells itself lies to make it to the next day. Instead of Homo Sapien, Wise Man, perhaps we are instead the Lying Beast or Mendacium Bestia, a term that also dispenses with the patriarchal collective noun Man and perhaps better captures our true nature in many respects as well. In 1981 I went without any food for […]
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In the everlasting conflict between those who fight and those who spin, Herr saw how the grunts were used and the Vietnamese defiled, and how those in charge warped language to serve the first need of those in power which is to remain in power. Grunts could die at 300 per week in “combat without focus (23),” on search and destroy missions, invasions, pacifications, in the jungles, in the rice […]
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War opens up a disconnect between those who actually fight, the grunts, and those officials who try to spin that fighting into tales of domination and perpetual success. Herr illustrates better than anyone else I’ve read about Vietnam, the impossible gulf between those two realities. He strips away all romance about the seedy, corrupt demiworld behind the front lines: “Saigan and Danang were alive with Lurps, seals, recondos, Green Beret […]
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Dispatches is one of the great American books of the 20th Century. I last read it over 40 years ago, and I simply did not have the maturity and years of reading and living necessary to fully appreciate its brilliance. Michael Herr was 28 when he spent a full year reporting from Vietnam in 1968, the year of the siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive. Dispatches, published in 1977, is his record of that year. […]
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