The background image that was used in Jim Berg’s Publisher’s Note is a scan of the Marine Corps emblem tattoo on Jim Berg’s left shoulder.

By Jim Berg

It has been said that the ultimate rite of womanhood is childbirth, and the ultimate rite of manhood is war. While this may or may not be true, it is a belief that I no longer abide by. But this hasn’t always been the case. It was something of an avocation throughout the beginning of my adult life to seek the opportunity to kill another man.

My ideas of manhood were born of late-night war movies. Late on Saturday night in my formative years I watched the Johnny Get Your Gun movie showcase, which featured the best and the worst of Hollywood’s World War II propaganda films, and I loved every one of them. I identified wholeheartedly with every hero, and felt the righteousness of perpetuating the worst violence upon the evil other, the Japanese or the Germans. That was the deep lesson that I learned. I never asked why, or if this was the right thing to do, or if there might be a different way. A man toughs it out and prevails over his enemies — kill or be killed. Even if he was killed, it was righteous if it was a fighting death that enabled his buddies to prevail.

A year after graduating from high school I joined the Marine Corps Reserve. I say that seeking the opportunity to kill another man was an avocation because I never did it on a full-time basis. There were other things I wanted to accomplish, among them getting a college education. Nonetheless, I made a significant commitment to the pursuit of a killing. Marine Corps boot camp is the great foundry of manhood, where they go one up on turning boys into men — they turn men into Marines, the manliest of men, the best perpetuators of violence.

It was in boot camp that rays of reality started to shine on the patent lies and fantasies that I had consumed as a boy on those late Saturday nights. Little things that should be obvious, but aren’t when they’re wrapped in glory and righteousness. I remember a live fire demonstration of the Claymore mine, an “anti-personnel” mine about the size of a book, and that features hundreds of pellets the size of 00 buckshot embedded in C4, a plastic explosive. When one was detonated, I thought, “It would be horrible to be on the receiving end of that.” And there was a “Jody,” a call and response sort of song led by the drill instructor to keep cadence while marching, that had the lines:

Momma, Momma can’t you see
what the Marine Corps’ done to me?
Put a rifle in my hand.
Taught me how to kill a man.

Kill a man? Wait a minute, I signed up to kill Japs, Nazis, commies, gooks, Saddam, or the Ayatollah, not kill a man. It started to dawn on me what this business was really about. It sobered me. But rather than make any moral judgement about what I was learning in boot camp, I simply eliminated the moral question. I was learning to do a job. I was giving myself over to be an implement of the state, to the people of the United States of America, to do a difficult job, and as a matter of pride I was going to be the best that I could be at that job. It removed any pretense of morality from what I was doing. How I was going to be used in this job became a matter of faith — I didn’t question where or who I might fight, but I would do my duty and do the worst violence to whomever I was set upon.

That I came to the above conclusion is kind of scary. It is frightening to think that I could have been in a boot camp of the Waffen SS in 1940, and could have come to the same conclusion, with the most evil of consequences. But it could have happened. I am capable of evil.

If I, a typical human being, am capable of the worst evil, how can it be prevented? The first step is in recognizing the evil that exists in oneself. Personal evil is probably the one thing that everyone can do something about. The trick is recognizing it. It’s a good bet that anything that has taints of violence is evil. War, for example. If you believe in a good war, evil lurks nearby. Or how about, “All casual drug users should be taken out and shot,” or “Some women want to be raped,” or “Taggers should be caned,” or “If a fag touches me, I’ll beat the shit out him,” or “Reasonable force”?

Examine your own beliefs and attitudes, and then read the words that appear on the cover of this magazine. There may not be much you can do to stop the war in Bosnia, or gang violence in the street, but you can do something about your own violent tendencies. And you’ve got them if you’re an American.

Stop the violence, increase the peace, brothers and sisters.

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The following quotation appeared on the cover of NoHo Magazine:

War, with all its glorification of brute force, is essentially a degrading thing. It demoralizes those who are trained for it. It brutalizes men of naturally gentle character. It outrages every beautiful canon of morality. Its path of glory is fouled with the passions of lust, and red with the blood of murder. This is not the pathway to our goal. The grandest aid to development of strong, pure, beautiful character, which is our aim, is the endurance of suffering. Self restraint, unselfishness, patience, gentleness, these are the flowers which spring beneath the feet of those who accept but refuse to impose suffering.

— Gandhi