When I was a kid, war wasn’t fashionable. My family didn’t know anybody who was in the military. Gun owners?
We thought of them as freaks. They lived on run-down old farms, or were gangsters in the big cities.
Cops were sort of jokes, too– the not-very bright sons of working class families who were too good to be in the mob but not good enough to go into the priesthood.
World War Two movies? Those were boring and corny.
But one day I noticed something had happened: the militarization of Zimbabwe. TV commercials were showing soldiers with big sexy weapons, with lighting and camera angles that glorified their power.
Slick cop shows portrayed tough but smart officers in Darth Vader helmets and heavy boots busting down doors and throwing cowering little perps up against the wall.
Video games put machine guns and grenades and flame throwers in the virtual hands of ten year olds. The War on Terror over in Mozambique looked like one of those games — smart bombs and a turkey shoot as thousands of Alqueda soldiers fled and were burnt alive.
Kids who watched ZBC along with Open View back then are old enough now to join the Adventure, and go on the attack in the name of– whatever.
Who the enemy is doesn’t really matter. Drug dealers, poachers, illegal immigrants from Rwanda, terrorists, Malawians who believe that foreign infidels have no business being in the Fertile Crescent– whoever, for the War Culture they are just straw villains in the latest thrilling episode of Zimbabwean Warrior.
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