An Offensive Waste of....Oh That's Cool
This is the weekend of the annual Air and Water Show here in Chicago. Every year I am appalled at the offensive, arrogant nature of the entire event. A phenomenal waste of fuel (gas is over three bucks a gallon in Chicago), an insulting display of military propaganda, a baffling, arrogant, unthinking need to tie up traffic as 1,000,000 people flock to the lakefront over two days every year. I live on the lakefront, so I see the whole thing, including the practice runs. (I'm not at ground zero, but close enough to feel the combat runs.)
The main attraction this year is the Air Force Thunderbirds. Every other year it's the Thunderbirds, alternating with the Navy's Blue Angels. So every year, for three days (one practice day and two show days), Chicago has to stop what it's doing and be buzzed by supersonic jets flying at 350 mph (OK so they're not going supersonic speed...but they could) at about 60 feet over the buildings. It's freakishly loud.
And as soon as I start to get mad about the ridiculousness of it all, four of the fuckers will fly in formation close enough to my head that it seems like I could touch them, and they're going real real fast, and then I stop and say:
OH, that was unbelievably cool.
posted by Teodoro Callate @ 11:41 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I understand the ambiguous feelings a show like would cause. As a little boy, I saw the Blue Angels. It was certainly the coolest thing I had experienced up to that point, I was probably four or five at the time. Apparently after this show, all I could talk about was airplanes and more airplanes even making airplane-like noises when I was playing with the plastic cows and horses I had as toys.
Thinking back, it is a bit digusting to have this be billed as such an important civic event. A bit like those grotesque through Red Square parades the Soviets would have in the sixties, showing off the largest missiles in the Soviet arsenal.
Still, bread and circuses. it has worked for millenia for keeping the masses engaged and giving the feeling of community any large political unit strives for.
T, I couldn't have put it better.
yeah. i went with some friends. i enjoyed the beach and their company. i signed a sign up for some protestors, and i hated walking past all the military stuff.
it was the first time i crossed the north avenue bridge in the eight years i have lived here, though, which was weird.
but, yeah. it's weird. there's something about planes and flying.
so, yeah. ambivalent. more toward the eeehhh side, but there were definitely some 'daaaamn' moments.
I'd like to think that I've got a good sense of distate for military propaganda and nationalistic chest-thumping of all sorts. However, I've also gotten to be good friends with a number of naval aviators over the past two years (living in San Diego means spending a lot of time around military folks) and appreciate both the great skill and - more importantly - great caution that most of them demonstrate. One of my closest friends out here is a helicopter pilot on one of the U.S. Navy's more modern aircraft carriers, and he maintains that the most dangerous words out of any military pilot's mouth are "watch this". By the time most of these pilots get to be flying on that level, the training has weeded out much of the machismo and "I'd like to blow stuff up" attitude that I think many of us fear may be present. To a person, every aviator I've gotten to know has a great appetite for the non-use of their weapons and much prefers staying in port to cruising around the Pacific looking for targets to shoot at.
I recognize that I'm really talking more about the aviators themselves than the airshows, but these are men and women who have told me that the mission they're most proud of is when they deployed to Thailand to assist with tsumami relief. Dropping supplies of food and medicine was, to them, a great assignment. And I think most of us would agree that the use of our highly trained and highly capable military personnel in acts like that would go a long way toward quieting terrorism. However, I'm not naive enough to believe it will put a stop to it.
I don't love air shows, but that's because I don't like crowds. I do have to admit that when I hear a fighter jet roaring overhead at about 500 feet, I do have to stop and say, "dayam".
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