Top / Gun

Thoughts on U.S. Militarism and Congressional Leadership

The thing I feel most ardently regarding the violence that Israel is currently waging on Gaza is heartbreak and grief. But right alongside that is shame and fury as a U.S. citizen for our role as a weapons dealer and financial backer of Israel’s military.

The author Kiese Laymon posted a single sentence to his Instagram account that has continued to haunt me:

“The United States could say stop.”

Yes, we could. But who are we? In Portland, Oregon, where I live, our representatives have been silent on the issue of a ceasefire. Writing them and calling them feel like screaming into a void. When I attended rallies outside the offices of Senators Merkley and later Wyden, we were quite literally screaming into the air, into each other’s blown-out ears, towards marble and reflective glass buildings that felt like impenetrable shields.

This has me thinking a lot about power and powerlessness, violence and nonviolence, and propaganda. As my mind whirls, I keep landing, strangely enough, on… Top Gun!

In many ways this is a frivolous line of thinking in the face of so much murder, but bear with me. Top Gun: Maverick grossed $1.496 billion, making it one of the highest grossing films of all time. Supposedly, 78 million theatre tickets were sold. This movie was seen by a lot of people. It’s influence on and reflection of our current national discourse is worth examining.

I never intended to see the new Top Gun. I’m not the audience: I never saw the original, and I’m not into military idolatry. But last summer, a friend who I adore invited me, and I was craving the cold oblivion of a movie theater on a hot summer night.

I left the theatre more worked up from a movie than I’ve been in years. There’s something clarifying about extremes. Really loving or really hating something can feel similar—both awaken strong feelings and help us define the contours of what we believe.

I can say with certainty: I couldn’t have hated Top Gun: Maverick more, and I have thought about no other movie, good or bad, as much in the past year. It crackles in the background of my thoughts whenever I walk past a tv screen playing mainstream news and see the ticker scroll.

What rankled me so much? Top Gun: Maverick engages rhetoric about masculinity, militarism, American exceptionalism, and the role of the hero in ways that feel terrifyingly juvenile; yet it’s a form of juvenility claimed by old men with power. Put another way, never have I seen a movie more concisely celebrate mindless pro-military fervor and gerontocracy. These blockbusters inform the American mythos. They tell us to support any and all American foreign interventions without introspection. They tell us we are only as strong as our military and our capacity for weapons manufacturing. They tell us the (aging) lone mavericks (who are, to be clear, old white men) are the only heroes we can depend on, and in turn, America is the only hero the world can depend on, and anything that intrudes on that narrative should be excised.

The first act of the movie is about Tom Cruise as Maverick working to fly a jet at outrageous speeds, but he learns the program will be cancelled because of lack of funding. You read that right! The first act of this movie is about how the military is underfunded. I couldn’t believe it myself. (I’m lying, I could! The military was deeply involved in the making of this movie, as it is in so many others.)

The second act takes us to Top Gun, an elite flying academy confusingly located within the navy. Maverick has been asked to teach the next generation of pilots how to fly a very difficult mission. He’s insulted because he’d assumed that he would fly the mission himself, believing he’s the only one who can. Instead, he must train the most promising pilots in the nation skills he’s never been able to share—ones that seemingly can’t be taught because they are part of his inborn machismo. Much of the next several hours involves these test flights and an unending number of countdowns to see if they can make the flight in time.

Their mission is to destroy a uranium enrichment facility being completed by an unknown enemy. Most of the criticism (and praise) I read about this film was about how the enemies are never named. In fact, they are very clearly disguised. (They look like variant Star Wars Stormtroopers to me.) Is it Iran? North Korea? “Terrorists” generally? It doesn’t matter. Enemies are not humans. When a U.S. pilot kills another pilot in a “dogfight,” they don’t see the death of a peer—of someone doing exactly what they do, if in a different uniform. Instead, each death is a well-earned “hit,” to be slapped gloriously on the ass for. The mantra Maverick repeats to the young guns is: “Don’t think. Do!” Why interrogate who the enemy is? All you need to know is that they’re the enemy. Don’t interrogate anything, actually. Don’t think. Do!

All this felt nauseating to watch, but none of this is why this movie has stayed with me. The real kicker for me was the third act. After intense training, it turns out that Maverick is the only one who can fly this difficult mission. The next generation is simply not up to the task. Maverick leads the mission and, surprise, he succeeds. Many hits made. The enemy slowed in its evil mission. Alas, the younger generation, we learn, is simply not good enough, brave enough, hardy enough, dare I say virile enough to lead. Thank God for Tom Cruise!

What did this make me think of… oooh, how about the U.S. Senate?! And the Supreme Court!? And the presidency!?

All my representatives at the federal level are old white Boomer men—Senators Ron Wyden (74 years old), Jeff Merkley (66 years old, a youngun!), and Congressman Earl Blumenauer (75 years old). (Note: The word senate derives from the Latin word “senex,” meaning “old man.”) Blumenauer announced last week that he won’t run for re-election. I applaud his decision, even as I believe it was the only honorable choice to make. None of the three has spoken about training the next generation of leaders. Importantly, none—not one—has demanded a ceasefire in Gaza or reckoned, honestly, with the killing of Palestinian civilians (at writing, 3,400 and counting of whom are children). Valuing one set of lives and erasing the other is ethically bankrupt. It fuels an economy of death.

“Don’t think. Do!” is a slogan for playing basketball, not for engaging in war. I hear echoes of it in Biden’s statement to Netanyahu on October 18: “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.” (My emphasis.)

As the news continues to frame this tragedy in conniving language, we need our faculties of thought now more than ever. We need to see everyone involved as a human and every life lost as a tragedy. We need to call for solutions that prioritize dignity rather than revenge. We need a ceasefire, now.

As a U.S. citizen, I am responsible for U.S. involvement abroad and I have very little power. Feeling helpless is an honest response, but not a very satisfying or effective one. Organizing is what’s called for, and organizing is slow going. Sometimes it feels like there are too many things to organize around. That said, something became crystal clear to me in these last weeks, and the recurring memory of Top Gun seems to affirm it: In the very next election cycle, we need new Congressional leadership in Oregon. This is the least we can do, but it is required. Enough with the U.S. pilots of government collecting their hits. It’s worth our time and care to give agency to the next generation and to ideals more loving, humanistic, and visionary than the old guard has shepherded into being.

The United States needs to say stop.