Appropriately, in researching for this post, it was extremely difficult to find sources that spoke freely about the history of silencing antiwar voices. The articles that do refer to the phenomenon generally opt for slithery language and none fail to add repeatedly that the government faces very tough decisions and always tries to do what is best for the country, even if her citizens neither understand nor agree. Upon looking at Antiwar’s website, my stomach dropped at the sight of a massive grid of headlines, organized by country, all detailing some horrific thing the US has done internationally. I grew up hearing about “the war in Afghanistan” and “the war in Iraq,” surrounded by backwater Christian conservatives and their indoctrinated children. My parents didn’t talk to me about the war, so my peers were my main source of wartime news, which was exactly as factual as one could expect from children. 

anti-Vietnam War protests by military personnel

I remember the distinct feeling that this must be a significant time to be alive, as I’d heard about the famous wars of yore and my grandfather had even fought in one. I figured there’d be a big parade or something when the troops came home, like my grandfather had described his return from Vietnam (It would be many years later that I found out that it was more of a public shaming than a celebration, due to the strong American antiwar sentiments regarding the Vietnam War). The war never seemed to end. I truthfully don’t think I know all the wars we’re currently fighting nor where because of the incessant, indecipherable drone of war-related news.

body bags of desecrated Ukrainian corpses in a ditch

Before this class, I hadn’t even thought about antiwar voices being silenced—school always made it out like Communist governments were the only ones who silenced opposition. Even in this class my friend whispered, “It’s giving Communism,” when Dr. Smith asked if the Fed punishing dissenters reminded us of anything. I think the whole Communist bit, the whole McCarthy thing, is simply a ploy to distract the public from the comparative flaws in our own system so that the government can keep doing what they’re doing and conflate it with moral issues. They do the same thing with the War on Terror—which I believe is supposedly what’s still going on in the Middle East—Ukraine, and Gaza. The government continues to remind us that Putin is committing war crimes in Ukraine and must be stopped, but this is merely an obvious way to justify involvement, given the US’s history of ignoring and committing war crimes or even buying the data that resulted from them, in Unit 731’s case. I’d always felt a strange sense of shame when I got mad about our country being so violent all the time, so I feel validated now, knowing that this feeling is not a product of bad character but rather of sound mind.

Bush greets troops for War on Terror

Dr. Smith’s words about how the US government makes reasons to be at war in order to give them more control rings true, especially now after doing some research and finding terrifying information and quotes from our leaders like Bush in 2001: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there.  It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” This statement is so disheartening because I know that there will always be “terrorist” groups with “global reach” and, if this statement is representative of future presidents’ views, this war will never be over.

I think it is so important that antiwar voices be heard because it goes back to the marketplace of ideas. If the government limits what ideas are permitted to appear it essentially monopolizes the idea space, which I’d consider a form of attempted brainwashing. To involve another First Amendment principle, the premise that states that we are more likely to become tolerant if we can see intolerance around us and, as a society, deem it unacceptable should be applicable here: if the government suppresses antiwar expression, isn’t it more likely to incite dissent? Repercussions may be a while down the line for the Fed, considering how good of a job they’re doing making sure people don’t get to hear these ideas, but I think, on our current course, a massive manifestation of public dissent is guaranteed.

Of the other presentations, the most engaging, for me, was Kenny Pridgen’s detailing the history of virtual reality. Kenny had a lot of real information and commanded attention with his energy and tone, which resulted in my learning more from his presentation than anyone else’s. Here is what I retained from that learning:

Luray Caverns, VA

Virtual reality has actually been around as a concept for a really long time, as in the early 1800s, when photo viewers were made with pictures taken from slightly different angles to simulate our eyes and make it feel like the viewer is ‘really there.’ I had photo viewers as a kid that adults would buy for me from various museum or landmark giftshops. My favorite was from Luray Caverns because it was a dreamlike experience seeing the caverns as a child and the pictures of that place are just phenomenal.

Edwin Link's early flight simulator

From the photo viewer, we moved to flight simulator “coffins,” as Kenny described them. I went looking for a picture of these coffins and was surprised to find that I disagree with the comparison. As you can see, that is clearly a mini airplane. This yet again reminds me of my childhood—yes, I will continue to make it about me—because my maternal grandfather, who fought in Vietnam and is something of a war history buff, has a whole flight simulator setup in his den in the basement of my grandparents’ house and would annually display his setup at WWII Weekend in Reading, PA (see right). He taught me how to fly using the throttle/joystick thing and introduced me to the inverted y-axis, which would prove disruptive to my video gameplay and scroll direction preferences for the rest of my life.

Sometime after these flight simulators, they made a VR headset that could only be used in labs because it had to be attached to a rig suspended from the ceiling. I don’t know what exactly this was used for, but it was too involved and large to be made into a consumer product, so we moved on.

The next stage that I remember, although I’m certain my memory fails me regarding intermediate stages, is the SEGA VR headset, which was fully head-mounted and semi-successful, except for that it made people sick, which is a common issue with which we’re stilling contending in today’s VR. Nintendo also tried a version of VR near the time of SEGA’s but theirs was a stationary tabletop model that did not perform as well on the market. 

Resident Evil 7 VR gameplay

Oculus made the first viable consumer VR headset, and I remember when this came out and started to gain traction. A bunch of my friends in school got them for Christmas that year and SUPERHOT, a slow-motion first-person shooter puzzle game, was very popular, along with immersive horror games such as Resident Evil. I never had one, nor did I use a VR headset until years later—I want to say 2021?—when my younger sister got a newer version for Christmas.

My personal opinion is that, while it didn’t make me sick, the VR was a disconcerting experience nonetheless: I enjoy a lot of videogames and have nothing against a little escapism from time to time, but the physical act of covering my eyes and the resulting sensations of confusion (I hope I don’t walk into something or step on the dog.) and character transcendence (I am quite literally a Jedi right now.) was strange. I didn’t know I had a line when it came to escapism, but VR discovered it for me. I was no longer a college student passing time with friends on Minecraft; I was someone else, or no one, nearly completely. The worst part was 1) the headache I’d get from the weight and skull-constriction of the contraption and 2) the taking off of the headset and brutal adjustment to reality. 

woman uses VR instead of pain management meds

I’ve read stories about how some mothers will use VR headsets during birth in order to help ease the agony. Commentary on these stories ranged from traditionalist disgust that mothers wouldn’t want to be fully present during the most painful thing most of these women would ever experience to borderline misandrist-feminist condonement and reminders that modern women only give birth lying down, which is a more painful, unnatural position, because a misogynist creep hundreds of years ago wanted to watch. I found myself somewhere in between disgust and support, finding it very reasonable to want to distract oneself from extreme pain but also a little weird that this was happening for the very reason it was effective—the dissociative quality of VR that makes pain less painful, I suspect, makes other emotions less emotional as well, which feels like a dangerous place to me. There’s definitely a Black Mirror episode about that.

And finally I get to talk about pigeons, one of the most pitiful animals to exist, thanks to us.

Even though people tend to have some level of disdain for pigeons nowadays, ranging from seeing them as a nuisance to outright despising them, for the majority of human history pigeons were useful and important. We bred and domesticated pigeons over centuries to be used for sending messages, rewarding them with food and training them to live dependent on human care, then promptly started shooting them for sport or kicking at them in city streets when we no longer needed them.

These so-called “rats with wings” that we hate so much for infringing on our synthetic biomes of concrete have served us for a long time. Homing pigeons have been used at least as early as ancient Egypt, where frescos and other depictions of pigeons being released and returning have been found, and were used to announce the winners of the Olympics. By 1167 CE, the Crusades had spread the knowledge and use of homing pigeons and the first regular pigeon route was established between Baghdad and most major points in Syria at the command of Sultan Nur ad-Din.

Fast forward a few hundred years and you’ve got Paul Julius Reuter, later ennobled Baron von Reuter and founder of Reuters news agency, who used a fleet of about fifty carrier pigeons to send news and stock prices between Brussels, Belgium, and Aachen, Germany. In 1897 there was the Great Barrier Pigeongram Service; if you’re thinking that sounds awesome, you’re so right. The Service was the most likely the first ever regular airmail route, sending “pigeongrams” between Auckland, New Zealand, and Newton, Great Barrier Island. They also developed what is believed to be the first airmail stamps, triangular and prized by collectors today, as are the old postcards sent via pigeon post. It is unclear whether or not the Service was definitively the first in these regards because there were a couple competing pigeon post companies on the island that cropped up about the same time.

1990 pigeongram sent by Charles Werner. "Dear Mr. Winkelmann, Charlie Soborne has smashed his arm last night from the wrist to the elbow by a rifle bullet. His father says that the arm will have to be amputated at once so Ernest asked me to send you this i.e. send a steamer at once to the Barrier...also if possible a lawyer."

 

Perhaps most famously, carrier pigeons were very useful in wartime for sending urgent information to and from front lines; they were used extensively in WWI and still proved important during WWII. During the first World War, which saw the creation of the US Signal Pigeon Corps, many pigeons were decorated, most of them receiving the Dickin Medal, a British recognition of gallantry in war animals, and one particularly heroic pigeon, Cher Ami, receiving the French Croix de guerre.

Cher Ami’s story almost made me cry upon reading it: He was a particularly fast flyer among the 600 Army Signal Corps pigeons sent to France and his bravery saved the 77^th Division, known as the Lost Battalion, at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. That day, the 77^th got split up from the rest of the American troops and were too far to radio to command to make their position known, so the Americans started bombing the area, believing it was only the Germans there. The 77^th tried sending word to command via pigeons, but the Germans shot all of them down until it was only Cher Ami, who got shot twice, fell to the ground, then somehow took off again and, despite having his message canister leg wounded so badly it was dangling from his body by mere tendons, successfully delivered the message, which read, “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” Cher Ami had to have his leg amputated, was permanently blinded, and eventually died from his wounds. Cher Ami successfully delivered twelve important messages during his service—more than most pigeons—and his little one-legged body is on display at the Smithsonian American History Exhibit.

During WWII, pigeons were a little more outdated but were vital on D-Day. The pivotal Invasion of Normandy had to be kept completely secret from the Germans, and as radio transmissions ran a risk of being intercepted and decoded, carrier pigeons aided in a lot of the communications that day. 

Even in the 21^st century pigeons have been used for post, specifically the India Police Pigeon Service, which unfortunately disbanded in 2002 due to the increasingly widespread use of the internet, but this past year an Indian police force in Odisha announced that they are keeping their flock of carrier pigeons in the case of extreme communication circumstances such as natural disaster. 

Since then, carrier pigeons seem to be used most notoriously for smuggling, bringing drugs and contraband like cell phones and SIM cards to prisons, which is such a criminal (*buh dum psh*) waste of their potential and downright disrespectful.

Carrier pigeons have done so much to advance society by way of keeping people in contact with each other. Communication is a basic human and societal necessity, and these guys have been helping us do so for thousands of years, sometimes in the scariest and most dire of situations.