Revisited: Weep for the Half-Life Warboys
Meditations | 008
And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it. ~ Deuteronomy 1:39
They never told them exactly who they were fighting. Because that’s not how you raise an army. Causes are simple, and loud. As long as the boys were moving and angry, they could be directed easily enough. Because it really doesn’t matter whether they’re fighting The Liberal Agenda or The Conservative Death Cult or Big Brother or The New World Order in the end. Everyone knows, deep down, that the boys are born to fight. Anything but let them sit still. Then they might think about where they are, and what’s happened to them, and what’s come before. If you don’t keep pumping them full of the cocktail of video essays and social threads, they might read history. As long as the boys fight the bogeymen, they can’t die for something real. Something really dangerous.
Immortan Joe: Once again, I salute my Imperator Furiosa, and I salute my half-life Warboys, who will ride with me eternal on the highways of Valhalla! I am your Redeemer! It is by my hand you will rise from the ashes of this world! ~ Mad Max: Fury Road
You see, they promise salvation. They hoist their fattened carcasses up to the heights and swear they’ll be as a god to the broken boys. And you’re supposed to give the real God everything. Because He promises you that He loves you. So the Warboys give it all, innocence, future, mind, spirit. Obedience to the powerful because the powerful promise protection. Deference to the wise because the wise promise guidance. And it would all be worth it, if any of it were true. Counterfeit gods don’t love you, or even know your name. And they certainly aren’t around to hear your supplicating call when you have no more strength to feed them. Adolescent child soldiers stagger through every one of the suburbs and boroughs. See them. Ask and they’ll show you the scars of the culture war, their battle ribbons and commendations earned frantically trying to crush the ephemeral night terrors of their decrepit generals and captains. You don’t lose limbs in the struggle to retake the Internet for Our Side, but you also cannot find a crutch for a shattered mind. The good little soldiers did it all and looked to their leaders for the promised salvation. But there’s never enough ersatz eternity to go around when all the depositors claim their share. The Warboys lives weren’t protected, they were spent.
JoJo Betzler: Stop offering me damn cigarettes! I'm ten! Adolf Hitler: All right, sorry, I'm stressed out! ~ JoJo Rabbit
Everyone feels bad for how they used the Warboys, if they’ve got any heart left at all. So they cocoon them with adult pleasures to dull their pain and control their anger. When they’ve broken your world and taken your adolescence, the thoughtless bliss of fantastic realities seems kind. Ask the twenty year old newlyweds competing with their grandfathers for Viagra prescriptions if the deal was worth it. Nobody wants soldiers around, not in the comfort of the real world. It’s too much of a downer to listen to their rambling and see their broken lives. So if they make too much trouble, they can always be shoved away; covered in shame for the very things that society demanded they become. If you’re thinking of a political party right now, then you might be causing the problem. Every corner of society keeps their own stable of boys on a leash. And then insists that we not see the other side’s Warboys for what they are. Empathizing with them is dangerous. Stay safe, and let them live out whatever time they have left cordoned off in university ivory towers or rusting industrial wastes.
Elsa: You’re not a Nazi, JoJo. You’re a ten-year-old kid who likes dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club. ~ JoJo Rabbit
They were all just little kids, once. They don’t want your pity now. After all, the mutant and the twisted can see something that the darlings of society might never glimpse. The Warboys know they can’t have peace in the arms of any of their old gods. That all of the world’s promises can’t be cashed out. That the influencers just use you as exit liquidity and the gurus only want your eyeballs. The Warboys might not have much life left in them. They might never make it to the milestones that were achievable for their forbears. They know that they are capable of doing great wrong. They will seem to you awkward, separated from your world, still clinging to foolish or problematic ideas. What set them out on their journey towards false glory was the inescapable feeling that they had found something worth dying for. They are slowly waking up, lost and ashamed. Won’t you tell them there’s still one chance? As pitiful a people as we are, I wonder why we ever thought we’d be sent more than one Savior. Will you teach the Warboys how to die well?
Don’t you know?
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” ~ John 13:36-37 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ~ Matthew 10:38-39
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