By Dave Patterson
Summer is around the corner in San Diego and many of us look forward to the annual traditions, like the Miramar Air Show.
This wildly popular event with perhaps 500,000 attendees brings people from all over the world to see the pilots demonstrate their precision flying and perhaps line up purchases of weapons.
Corporate chalets are available where the weapons vendors can “use their company logo and message to reach 500,000 Air Show Attendees, while the military people risk their lives to entertain the crowd.
More sinister is the promotion of war to our youth, prevalent throughout the show. In 2016 they had a Drone strike simulator, where kids could get their faces painted and simulate a Drone strike against terrorists.
Kids being cheered for killing terrorists’ dead on a dirt road in the middle East brings full circle how our government is desperate to recruit, and desensitizing kids to killing a necessary element.
San Diego Veterans For Peace is working to challenge people’s perception of what is really happening at the Miramar Air Show. It is thrilling and fun, but is it OK to teach our kids that killing people by remote control is acceptable, or a perversion of a tyrannical state? We encourage the readers to visit Youtube and search for Disneyland of war, short documentary.
Read our position on the air show go to: www.sdvfp.org Our effort is to change people’s minds regarding the purpose and methods in use at the airshow. All we ask is that the public consider our arguments against attending, and if they agree, just don’t go!
Dave Patterson is the past President of San Diego Veterans For Peace
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We are still paying homage to our history as a mecca for the wild, shoot ’em up “heroes” who established much of our value system. I recently saw a part of a TV show about a national competition for college mascots and cheerleaders. Several of the schools that had earned high scores were from the deep South, and several of their mascots were made to look like law-men from the old wild west. Complete with holster and pistol. Which some of them pretended to aim the toy gun at someone in the crowd. I didn’t get upset enough to copy the exact name of the group etc. and I am not even sure of the channel. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who might know. otherwise, watch out next year. Thanks.
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