Semi-OT: Collaborators

[Webstral]

I watched the first half of Red Dawn the other day on a lark. I used to revile the mayor of the town in Colorado. Now, I find myself much more sympathetic. The guy’s in a tough spot. Freedom fighters hate collaborators, but someone has to work with the enemy to keep the machinery of daily life going. Patriotism should not demand that women, children, the infirm, and the elderly give up their lives in hopeless shows of defiance. Therefore, the mechanisms that keep daily life going must be maintained—even under occupation by enemy forces. Any given man can run off to the hills, but what if that man has a family who can’t make such a journey? What if that man has responsibilities that include keeping daily life going for those who must endure the occupation? War demands that all its participants make hard choices, and not all of them will be popular with single men in their teens and twenties. I don’t like the mayor especially, but I appreciate him as a character now that I have a wife and two young children.