GranolaBox

Last Saturday the Queen of my Universe and I took Medium and Eldest to the Rochester Air Show. I understand that the primary use for aircraft in this country is military, but for some reason I wasn’t ready for the barrage of propaganda that came with the price of admission.

The first thing I, or anyone else would notice is the giant, hangar-sized “Virtual Army Experience” tent, with the five or so semi-trucks that carted all of it in. Before you can even get a stone’s throw away from a real airplane, there’s an endless barrage of recruiting booths for every possible branch of the service. There was at least one for every branch.

This part really pissed me off. Of course we’re at war, of course we need more cannon fodder, but not on my dime okay? If the armed forces saw fit to pay my admission AND turn Rochester’s young people into trained killers, that might be another thing.

The planes WERE really cool though. The footage on the video below gives you a good picture of the kinds of planes and exhibits that were there, as well as the affront to our hearing in the form of the band that played for much of the afternoon at the end of the runway.

They also had the type of helicopter my Dad flew in Vietnam, which was cool to see. The only really impressive civilian aircraft was the Fed-Ex jumbo jet. I told the crew member that it was nice to see a plane there that wasn’t in the business of killing people.

The highlight of the show was the Air Force Thunderbirds. I’d seen these from a distance during some of the past air shows, but there’s nothing like being right there as they do their close flyovers. The same person posted some great footage of the T-birds.

The barrage of recruiters cast a cynical pall over me for the rest of the afternoon, but QoMU was much more philosophical about the whole experience. The planes and the technology made her feel like she was back in peacetime (in a manner of speaking) when you felt like these planes were protecting us. We could sleep better at night knowing that our mostly invincible army with its brave fighting men was out there watching over us. Of course, these planes were most likely bombing the crap out of some remote part of the earth while we got these warm fuzzies, but that didn’t seem to matter as much because there was a time when we weren’t involved in an overt war.

This was the height of our military dominance. Like the petroleum that fueled this hegemony our dominance is declining sharply. And I’m okay with that. I’d rather see beautiful planes dancing gracefully in the sky than unleashing death any day.

Filed under: General Observations, Politics on August 2nd, 2008