I said I wouldn’t watch “American Sniper” until I finished the book.
That was easy – seeing as it’s not out yet. (But, even if it was, I wouldn’t’ve – ’cause you really do get all the facts better that way when you’re free of the emotional music and drama dictating how you should feel.) The book – an autobiography – was an excellent read. It details the life of Chris Kyle – a Navy SEAL credited with being America’s most “deadly” sniper (in that he had the most kills). And while this catchphrase was admittedly part of the allure that prodded at my morbid curiosity when I first picked it up and began thumbing through its pages, it wasn’t the overriding message I had bouncing around in my brain after finishing it. I have my own thoughts on war, sure. But those are irrelevant. What kept my attention through the reading was something else – something I couldn’t relate to personally – but could relate to when I considered old friends, new friends, and even that one skittish neighbor guy who lives above me who was combat wounded and has seen bloodshed of epic proportions.
What also jarred me – was the commentary online following this story – both about the book and upcoming movie.
Like the article I saw this morning about how Kyle (who was ultimately murdered in 2013 in Texas by a marine he was trying to help battle PTSD), “wasn’t a hero”. And that we shouldn’t exalt him via Hollywood. And that he was actually a “psychopath who reveled in murder and was racist”. That he “told tall tales” and “bragged” in his autobiography. That he’d wrongly call the men he had to kill “evil bad guys”, when things aren’t that black and white. Then, as ever, there were the comments at the bottom – split between those hailing Chris Kyle as a hero – and then those finger wagging along with the author – adding that he allegedly sniped Katrina looters (unsubstantiated) or started fights in bars to keep proving his manhood. Yes, it’s easy to get drawn into the drama. But I think people are forgetting some important points.
Chris Kyle was a human person. He wasn’t a Marvel comic book hero. He wasn’t Patrick Bateman in camouflage, either. He was a man with grey areas and layers and oscillations of emotions. He was a cowboy and a boyfriend and a husband and a dad before he went to war. He was changed while he was at war. Then he came home and remained changed – trying to acclimate (like everyone else who goes and returns). Which leads to another salient point: You cannot, cannot, cannot hold a man who has been to war to the same standards as everyone else who’s been carrying on peacefully in a mostly civil society. You just can’t.
Is that hard for you to accept?
Let’s try an exercise then. ’cause we need only have a modicum of empathy to “get” this on a logical level.
For all vets – not just Chris Kyle:
THAT SKITTISH NEIGHBOR WITH PTSD
By empathy, mind you, I don’t mean saying, “there, there” and patting a vet on the head. I mean trying your hardest to put yourself in their blood spattered boots and walk a mile from a green to red zone while a sticky cocktail of feces and clotted blood clings to their soles. Even if you try to imagine being in a war torn Iraq – dirty, dusty, with the smell of putrefied shit filling the air and the landscape dotted with chronic carnage – you’ll be hard pressed. For you or I, it’s conceptual. For you or I, our job is not one where every momentary decision comes with the odds of whether we’ll live to see the next. If you get bored, you can let your guard down and make a mistake. When being shot is always a very real possibility, that’s not an option. You’re in a constant state of fight or flight. This state of being becomes habitual. You turn into a very nervous person. That’s why Chris’s wife often had to say his name before climbing into bed if he was asleep. That’s why the neighbor from upstairs probably looks nervously all around whenever I catch him outside my building eating Cheerios. That’s why I know to approach my veteran friends a bit differently from my civilian friends – both in language and action. But kid-gloves aren’t the only facet of compassion or empathy.
Society still clearly has some high expectations of returning soldiers – especially if they’re so quick to name-call.
MURDEROUS PSYCHOPATH?
After your first kill, they say the others get easier. How? It’s the same way your brain needs to reconcile things to avoid the pain of cognitive dissonance. We have to rationalize things to process them peacefully. People don’t like his use of “bad guys”, “evil”, or “savages”. And you don’t have to like it – but you can ask why it’s being employed. Why would someone need to not only make something black and white, but an extreme? Could it be because – when there’s no room for emotion to precede every time you have to do your job – your brain needs a moral label so you can move on and do your job? So you can squeeze the trigger in good conscience? So that the death of your friend you just witnessed had a meaning – because, hell, you’re doing that same job too? Those dubbing a sniper like Kyle “psychopathic” may be missing something very relevant here. If he was a true born psychopath, would he even need to rationalize who’s a good guy or a bad guy? Wouldn’t he just do it without adding in emotions? Is it possible that maybe instead war turned Chris a bit psychopathic? Yes. Absolutely. But you spend a few years, off and on, constantly witnessing detached limbs and dragging your friends and their intestines to safety in vain. And tell me your sensitivity threshold doesn’t click up a few notches.
“TALL TALES AND BRAWLS”
Chris talked about himself being a “SEAL” as a part of his identity. That’s who and what he was for a long time – and he was willing to die for the life that went with that identity. There’s a whole exclusive, elite, fraternity that goes along with something that highly esteemed. And then… it’s over once you’re done. Who are you anymore? You know that uncle who talks about his high school football career over and over – and each time the story gets better? This is a natural human tendency for many an everyday person. It’s a rush that ends and you can’t help but get nostalgic. Now, if you add in the life-and-death element of war, getting dubbed a hero, the years of hard work you did, the willingness to die – and then, suddenly, this surreal lucid dream and all its valor… ends… what happens? I imagine the time following that prolonged peak experience – especially if you were doing something that mattered not only to you but to a whole country – can be pretty effing depressing. Some cope with their golden era’s cessation by thumbing through photo albums. Some by fantasizing about it. Some by repeating it. Some by claiming they’ve repeated it in some form. Whether Mr. Kyle actually shot a couple of dudes trying to carjack him or really punched Jesse Ventura for speaking ill of SEALS, I’ll never know. What I do know, is how hard it is to come down from a validating high. And to want to duplicate some semblance of it. For a SEAL, that just might mean looking for a fight or telling a story he wished had happened. Not sayin’ – just sayin’.
RACIST?
As for the “racism” accusations… Again, I have one foot firmly rooted in the land I was born in – and one conceptual, abstract, hypothetical toenail in the middle of a firefight where I’ve just seen my buddy eat a bullet. If I’m that guy, I’m making the sudden realization that none of my civilian buddies with their war video games will ever comprehend: there are people on the other side of this hide who want to kill me. Murder me. Take my life, the lives of my brothers in arms, and my country’s next. And these people seem to have the common theme of looking and dressing and talking a certain way. Same language. Same garb. Same race. Every day. I’d have no escape in this situation – no comparative individuals to make me remember “not all people who look and speak like this are insurgents”. If this is your reality, day after day, of course you’re going to start perceiving things like race a little differently. I’ve made the same types of associations – granted for lesser traumas and not regarding race; but I too have feared people who happen to have a distinct look. And that’s been based off a solitary isolated event. Not a repetitive reality like these guys had.
COMPASSION FOR VETS
When you’re in a situation that’s separate from your conventional social context, your reality changes. Stay there for a prolonged period, and it becomes a habitual perception of reality. Even when you leave, it remains with you. This is exacerbated by a lack of escape. Because even when you close your eyes – especially when you close your eyes – you see “it”. “It” might be your gut shot buddy – who you lied to when you said, “You’re gonna be alright”. “It” might be guilt of when you saw someone’s head explode through your scope – and then laughed about it to the guy next to you. “It” might be the sight of your best pal’s faceless head after going over an IED – and the tangent thought: “It should’ve been me”. When that’s your reality every day – for months – for years, maybe, it remains regardless of where you go. You don’t just get to turn that off. The brain stamps in habits indelibly and it takes a good amount of time and new routines to ever begin to mitigate or counteract that.
In this way, my interest in Chris’s story (and the ensuing fuckery of comments) has made me less interested in Chris.
Because Chris Kyle is one man. He joined the service with the aim of doing what he thought was right.
And he’s dead now.
BIGGER PICTURE
That sounds callous of me. So I’ll concede there’s a kind of tragic irony here: you spend your life planning to die like a hero in battle. But here’s he truth: His friend who lost his vision – didn’t die till a follow up surgery back home. And similarly, Chris didn’t get taken out “in the shit” either – but by a fellow fighter back home, also suffering from PTSD. There’s no neat bow tie for this story or for Chris, the human man. And knowing this is good – because it’s a reminder that he’s one person who can die like you or I. He wasn’t immortal. He wasn’t any more special than any other soldier who chose not to share their story publicly. And I’m not saying that – or he, for that matter – is “good” or “bad” because of it. These are just facts. What does interest me now, is the narrow minded reaction I keep seeing in the form of the comments online. That he shouldn’t tell tall tales. That he’s picking fights and “blaming it on pent up aggression”. That he thought killing was fun. If we can accept that war changes your brain irreversibly, can we maybe also accept that every soldier returning – not just Chris Kyle – is no longer living in your or my reality? That the coping mechanisms acquired in a foreign nightmare world have stuck? Most people understand that soldiers go to war willing to sacrifice their lives. What we must also realize is that even if they return on the outside of a coffin, they’re still holding a funeral for their peace of mind every single day. These silly online opinion forums don’t matter. What does matter is the way families, friendships, and employment positions all fall apart because these types of mistaken ideologies spread. We must have enough compassion to know that behind the jokes or stoic exterior of a returning warrior, many are suffering in silence for the sake of those they love – and for acceptance from a society they gave up their sanity to try and keep safe.
So, hopefully Eastwood covers all these little grey areas in his film.
Because if we paint someone we don’t even know in black and white language – like “hero” versus “psycho”…
..are we really doing any better than someone saying their enemy is “evil”? Or all brown folk are “bad”?