I was watching Red Dawn (the good one) with my son earlier this week. He thought it was awesome the way high schoolers fought back against Russian/Cuban/Nicarauguan/Mexican communist invasion.

I thought it was interesting how the Powers Booth explains the way they get their armies up into the US after the Spetnaz takes out key lines of communication was through illegal immigration, then organizing, revolting and "opening the doors for the entire army." But I digress . . .

My son was seriously saddened by the fact that almost all of the Wolverines end up dead by the end. He kept asking why they all died. I wondered about that for a long time because when I was his age, we watched Red Dawn a hundred times. I am sure that I pretended I was Robert yelling "Wolverines!" in the backyard before a Russian helicopter took me out a hundred times. I really started wondering about why it was so difficult for my son. Then it occurred to me . . . I grew up watching Sands of Iwo Jima, Midway, Longest Day, then when I was older all the Vietnam Movies (Platoon et al) that followed. My son sees Marvel and DC movies where everyone has superpowers and no one dies. Chicago or New York might get destroyed but any casualties are faceless and you never meet them. War is always intimate and no one who dies is ever faceless.

I am not sure about an entire generation of youth being raised on the idea that war is not really costly to a nation because a handful of invincible people can just win it for you is a good thing. Everyone in youth books, movies, etc., have superpowers. The enemies are always faceless aliens or vampires or monsters. How many aliens invasions can one planet have? When is the enemy going to be an actual enemy that we can relate to? Even Red Dawn had the Cuban Colonel who had moral misgivings about going from insurgent to counter-insurgent.

I wonder if we teaching our youth through our entertainment culture that war really isn't that bad and that some special group of super people will always win it for you any way.