Media Covers A Different Military Homecoming

It’s about time. After 18 years of an increasing disconnect between the mentality of the average human being on the ground in the U.S. and the average human being on the ground in Iraq, the media is stepping up and trying to help us put it together: War = Death.

This 30-year-old very real man, Phillip Meyers, was killed in Afghanistan on April 4. He is important. He has a family. He is not alone.

I won’t go so far as to say there’s some sort of conspiracy afoot, one meant to generated a sort of laissez faire attitude about bombs and mass graves, but part of me wishes that these wars really had been our Vietnam. Had they even proposed (in a serious way) reinstating the draft, I can’t believe Iraq would ever have been invaded. Had we watched the war on TV, I doubt very highly we could have stomached it for this long.

These images are difficult, horrible, and, yes, they will make you cry and beat your fist against walls and grit your teeth. But that’s not such a bad thing. Being connected to something in which real people are hurting on both sides is necessary to understanding why it’s so goddamned important we get out. And never go back in so cavalierly.

Poppies Vs. “Pom”-ies

So I know I just waxed philosophic (idiotic?) about my distaste for consumerism and how I think the rampant coveting-of-thy-neighbor’s-proverbial-iPod is ruining our culture and blah blah blah, and another anti-consumerist-type rant seems too much, right? Tough noogies. My blog.

This story may have flown well under the radar this weekend, but I think it may be the most interesting one of the bunch.* Turns out Afghan farmers can make more money ($2000 an acre more, to be exact) growing pomegranates than poppies. In other words, Pom and its ilk have outpaced heroin as the most marked-up overblown new-thing-ya-gotta-have on the street. By a lot. Really a lot.

From an expert on such matters:

At 26 cents per fluid ounce, POM is 3 to 4 times more expensive than national orange juice brands…POM’s tagline, DRINK TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT, works on two levels: It reinforces the health benefits of the juice and plays off of an emotional idiom.

In short, it’s good for you, AND more lucrative than heroin. What a cash cow!

*I must admit that I’m also interested in this because of my locale. Pomegranates are in no small supply here in Spain (they named an enormous area after them–”granada” = “pomegranate” in Spanish). I just constantly marvel at how oppositely-motivated the Spaniards are to the Americans. As much as they talk about needing to market and branding and what not, there is just more emphasis here on being happy in your life than being happy in your work. Like it or not, that’s why trends like these always pass them by. My husband teaches a lot of these branding specialists at a big company, and I can’t wait till he tells them about this. Oh, the forehead slapping that will ensue! And then they’ll go laugh about it over a 3-hour lunch.