“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
I know very little about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, other than the fact he is known as the father of modern Turkey, but these words he wrote for a memorial at Anzac Cove may be the most generous ever about what was essentially an invading army.
I had never heard of the battle of Gallipoli until I saw the Peter Weir film in 1981 about Australian and Kiwi soldiers thrown into a meat grinder in World War I in Turkey to make things easier for the English.
Gallipoli is credited as one of the main factors in creating a sense of nationhood in Australia and New Zealand, a separateness from Great Britain.
The quote that opens this piece was the inscription on a memorial to the battle of Gallipoli, and it is also inscribed on memorials to the battle in Australia and New Zealand.
Unfortunately, it has been removed from the original by the orders of current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has chosen to regard the Anzacs as crusaders attacking Turkey for religious reasons.
Ah, religion.
Who would have thought that as we became more technologically advanced, we would become more primitive in the way we regard our fellow human beings?
It isn’t just the Muslims either. Fundamentalist Christianity in this country has left millions of the faithful thinking of Donald Trump as a gift from God. And Trump, being what he is, has taken advantage of it, going so far as calling himself the “Chosen One.”
It’s more than just religion, too. In this generation, we have seen an increase in rabid nationalism. The years after World War II showed great promise, with the creation of the United Nations, the use of the Marshall Plan to rebuild devastated Western Europe and other such programs like John F. Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps.
What changed?
I think at the most basic level, we got stupid. We used to view recreation as a way to rejuvenate ourselves so that we could work. Now it seems as if recreation is the main point of life and work is something we do to support financially our desire to have fun.
And one form of recreation that seems to have fallen by the wayside is reading. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million American adults cannot read. Maybe even more appalling, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says 50 percent of American adults can’t read books at the eighth-grade level.
As bizarre as it may sound, we have a president who goes out of his way not to read. When Donald Trump insisted he hadn’t know about the allegation that Vladimir Putin was paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers, someone pointed out that it had been mentioned in the daily brief presented to the president each day.
Despite his denials, it has been pretty obvious that Trump doesn’t read the daily briefs.
In fact, there is at least anecdotal evidence that Trump is in some respects functionally illiterate.
Lack of reading by adults isn’t all that new. In the wonderful 1979 film “Time After Time,” time-traveler H.G. Wells’ first reaction when he sees the apartment of an intelligent modern woman is, “Where are your books?”
You see, when people don’t read, they lose the ability to think for themselves. Reading books – especially ones without pictures – does more to stimulate your mind than almost anything else. By contrast, nothing makes your mind more passive than watching television.
“I don’t have time to read.”
You hear that a lot, and if someone is working two or three jobs just to pay their bills, it may be true. But if someone comes home, turns on the television and spends the evening watching TV, it’s pretty much bullshit.
And with enough people like that basically not used to thinking enough for themselves, it’s why instead of FDRs, we get Trumps.
It’s why instead of Ataturks, we get Erdogans.
It’s why we’re scared to death of anything outside our own personal experience.
And that, as they say, ain’t good.