Note; This is from the current play I’m working on. This would be the ending monologue to “Disorientation Day In Rutledge” set in September 2020
Another note; The school was originally “Rutledge Friends School” but was taken over by eminent domain to become the GSP Military HS.
Girlalogue
General Bismark Martin and fellow students here at the renamed George S. Patton Military High School, let me address you. My name is-well I’m a female and as General Martin said previously, names no longer matter. Let everyone hear me, let the walls hear me. Let me speak to the ancient legions, the ghosts of students past. I speak the words of General Smedley Butler, from our own Delaware County, Smedley Butler who won not one but two Medals of Honor. General Smedley Butler who became a police chief of Philadelphia and was not afraid to jail and arrest a criminal named Al Capone, who wrote a number of books, we all remember books-One of his quotes was that, and this was the title of one of his books “War is a racket… which can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war”. History remembers some and leaves others buried. To the victors belong the teaching of history to the next gen of students. Major General Smedley Butler also said “I was a gangster for capitalism”. We are being offered, no mandated to take this training, this education, to become soldiers without anything to fight for, only chimeras to fight against. “We are the most social species on Earth and we are also the most Violent species on Earth” This was by Jean Decety, a Social Neurologist at the U of Chicago. This was from a Nat Geo in January 2018, but we don’t need any more quotes from generals or scientists, from presidents or popes, from celebrities or singers, we know the answers because we also know the questions.
Fighting continues over generations, whether it’s nationalism or other isms, religion or
other beliefs, any argument will do. Isn’t it time, past time, to question what has been handed down to us as an unholy gospel, that we have this sacred right to take lives with any and all we disagree with? For all those in named and unnamed graves from wars both regional and national and world, isn’t it time to question. Can I ask this question?;
Isn’t there another way? Isn’t there another answer?
robertthesmall 