You break it you buy it.

"Officially, the company boasted of its forces "join[ing] the hurricane relief effort." But its men on the ground told a different story." (Scahill, 321)

What is happening here is that the Blackwater troops landed on home soil claiming to help out with Hurricane Katrina. The reality is that upon arrival, they did little to help and treated the wasteland of New Orleans like a playground. Their presence actually had a negative effect on New Orleans. Does anyone else see a problem here?

This really articulates a major problem with this type of task force; if something like this does happen and people know about it, how can you cover it up or defend yourself? The amount of trust given to this task force in order for them to have a massive budget, operate independently and have little restriction on what they do is colossal, and the fact that they abuse it is a kick in the face to everyone involved. You've got a bunch of children loose in a candy store, except this time there are ramifications extending past "you break it you buy it".

There are serious moral issues with this as well, which Scahill draws on to justify his thoughts on mercenary armies. He is drawing on peoples knowledge of how awful it is to kick someone when they are down, and on people's patriotism to create negative opinions on this event. Being Canadian I can't identify with this particular example, but worldwide people know that if your city is hurting, the last thing you will stand for is someone (who should be on your side!) furthering the damage. By both demeaning the task force and drawing on people's personal emotions Scahill forcefully imposes his opinion on the reader, which makes me wonder whether or not I should believe all that I am reading...

Unwarranted Celebration?

"The weeks after the Fallujah killings, Blackwater announced plans to build a massive new facility-a twenty-eight-thousand-square-foot-administrative building-on its Moyock property for its operations" (Scahill, 151)

Because of their "success" at Fallujah, Blackwater begins to expand. This raises the question of how this organization measures triumph. Furthermore, do the people paying for this force think that this is successful? The theme of secrecy and appearance vs. reality is really evident here, as all of this is going on without the majority of world forces having any knowledge of it. Furthermore, they seem to be operating on a basis of profit>morals and no one is questioning it until now.

The fact that this organization is able to take their increasing success through immoral means and turn it into a healthy profit without anyone knowing or questioning it is appalling. Anyone who has any hope at stopping it has their morals circumvented by a large paycheck, and I think that is one of the true messages Scahill is trying to put across.

A Powerful Paradox.

"The home where young Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater USA, gruew up sits along the sleepy banks of Lake Macatawa, an inlet of Lake michigan in the American Midwest. Trees shimmer along the edges of the driveway on a summer day; the sun glints peacefully off the lake." (Scahill, 1)

Upon re-examining the text, I found it interesting to note that Scahill chose to begin his book with such a serene image. The journey through Blackwater is one during which I was tormented by a concern of "if this went on without notice, what else could be happening". Because of this, Scahill's choice to begin his novel with a seemingly ironic statement, starting with this seemingly perfect world and then diving into the harsh reality is one worth examining. My belief is that although at first investigation it seems ironic, Scahill could be trying to portray the blissful ignorance in which we all live, emphasizing the fact that people try to block out the truths they don't want to hear. Upon re-examining the book you notice a very subtle yet always present idea that we are ignorant by our own will, and Scahill seems to scorn us for this mentality. I did not notice this until scanning through the text a second time, and I was being thorough on my first read-through so either I missed what was intended to be obvious, or he left it deliberately subtle for a reason I cannot understand.

Influence Over Innovation. 2

"The moral of all this is that every form in literature has a pedigree, and we can trace its descent back to the earliest times. A writer's desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read, which usually means what the people around him are writing."

Frye's point here is relatively self-explanatory. I cannot agree with him entirely however, because he seems to believe that there is no innovation in literature. The only time I would find his point to be untrue is when the first writers began to create. Obviously there had to be a beginning to literature, and at this beginning there would be no prior experiences of literature to draw upon. Even in this case however, literature is always going to draw on something, whether it is previous literary experiences or experiences in life. This is where I believe the first writers drew their inspiration from.

Apart from that one minor exception, I believe that Frye's argument is completely valid. The one thing that really stuck out to me was that he appears to have a very scientific mind, in that he brings everything down to blunt truths. This is evident in how he does not like to leave us with the idea that certain brilliant minds progressed literature more than others, rather that no human does anything more than draw from previous literature.

Whether or not Frye's scientific inference is entirely correct still is not determined within my mind. All of the evidence appears valid, but I personally like the idea that our minds are not all so similar.

Evolution- Not all it's cracked up to be. 1

“What’s produced the aeroplane is not so much a desire to fly as a rebellion against the tyranny of time and space.”

When Frye writes this, it is easy to take the meaning out of it that human's have a natural sense of rebellion towards authorities, and this instinct "can never stop". His observation here is one I agree with, and also an instinct I believe is beneficial for humans to possess. As discussed in class, rebellion against authorities causes us to challenge what would otherwise remain the standard, and were it not for this instinct, we would risk stagnation. As far as the lessons to be taken from this, I would have to say that it goes to show that human nature is no fluke; and to not abandon your intuition. There's an interesting parallel from Frye's message to McCoullough's, in that both contain the idea of not missing the big picture. Many could view this fact of human's not producing aeroplane's for flight, as simply that. Whereas McCoullough encourages readers to look deeper into the text, and to pull out a more significant meaning.

In fear of simply reiterating what my classmates have already posted, there is another meaning to this quote that I noticed, although it is slightly far-fetched.

When Frye writes that our motive for flight is nothing more than a desire to save time, one can't help but think that 10 years ago, in our own lives, the concept of flying was exciting to us because it was something that we thought shouldn't be possible. In our eyes, it was a miracle. However, in the eyes of the "matured" population, the concept of flight does not offer any significance other than saving time. This gives the idea that as we "evolve" as humans, we begin to take more for granted, and that perhaps the insight of the immature is one that we have undervalued. Both Frye and McCoullough have a similar message in this sense. McCoullough states that although some literature may be outdated, its quality will never be matched. Frye, states that opinions which are not as "advanced" are ones that we are overlooking, and that they contain lessons we must learn as adults. The key differential here is that we acknowledge aged literature for its worth, where as we still must learn to appreciate the lessons we once knew.