What Price Glory?

Screaming in with a mounting, shuddering roar, they descend, split the sky, and shear off, their trail of sound and fury left for collection in the next pass.  It is a rite of passage into fall.  Every October the Blue Angels come to San Francisco to celebrate Fleet Week.  It is an anachronistic tradition in these days of closed naval bases, a reminder of a historic past as the port of embarkation for numerous Pacific wars.  (Don't you love that oxymoron?)  The display has been toned down over the years, due to the almost as raucous debate over the danger and disruption of ear-splitting military jets barnstorming a major urban area, but the shows draw large crowds every year.

Who here remembers the "Peace Dividend"?  Don't all raise your hands at once.  President George HW Bush (Pater), despite the action in the Gulf War, had the opportunity to turn swords into ploughshares at the close of the Cold War.  San Francisco got the Presidio National Recreation Area out of the deal, as well as a superfund site at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard.  President George W Bush (Filius), in following his father's footsteps, trod merrily back to the Persian Gulf and squandered all but the irony of his father's peace dividend.  San Francisco is righteously outraged, and as ground zero for opposition politics is still a bastion for flower power activists. 

Why then do we flock to the edge of the bay to crane our necks in admiration at these war machines burning fossil fuels with alarming extravagance?  We are a compassionate city that publishes the pleas of immigrants from war-torn nations, Israelis, Bosnians, Vietnamese, PTSS suffering veterans, and decries the pomposity of military propaganda.  We cite the liability and never pristine safety record of mixing fighter jets with packed crowds.  We snub military recruiters, barely tolerate JROTC in schools, and reject the symbolism of military might as a palliative in uncertain times.  We abhor grandstanding, "my country love it or leave it" unexamined patriotism, and we love a good show.

The Blue Angels do put on a good show.  They are a wonder of power and precision, barreling down on us with the sudden shrieking throb of impending cataclysm.  They are glory lifted up to the skies to own the impossible, to magnify man's technological aspirations, to soar with speed and coordination through once unreachable heavens.   Their contrails make a distinct looping filigree in the sky before dissolving into a spectral mist.  They roar into our consciousness with primal urgency and clench our vitals with an instinctive adrenaline burst, thrilling or terrifying or both.  Then, just as quickly, they are gone, vanished into faraway specks, leaving only sound as a physical presence still vibrating the cups on the shelf.

The Blue Angels are majestic, and much as we can rebel against the authority they represent, it is hard not to look up as they pass.  They are just that cool.