"Here am I, Send Me"

Something incredible happened this past Monday on the series 24.

We saw self-sacrifice.

Why do I say incredible? Reflect for a minute; visualize the bursts of clips at the turning of the hour on television when the upcoming previews spit on our faces. What sticks in the eye? I see put downs, back biting, sex jokes, (the phrase ‘having sex’ has lost that important modifier, ‘relations’), and endless spumes of look-at-me prances, jiggles, hops, cleavages, postures and poses.

Dignity, thy face is turned away.

The seals are failing. Gas will eventually seep into the last breathable air. Like being trapped in a sunken submarine, or a deep mine, there is no hope, no prayer to live. Almost none anyway. Someone must volunteer to disengage the computer jamming control of the ventilation.

Someone has to volunteer to die.

Said Sean Astin as Lynn McGill, “We have to do this.” His companion, an unnamed security personnel is balking, “What if they are wrong? What if this? What if that?”

He says again, “We will all die anyway. We have to do this.”
The security man talks with his daughter on his cell phone. “When will you be home daddy?”

Their deaths are not pretty. But their deaths signify.

“That others might live” is the motto of the United States Air Force Pararescuers. Very different from the Jihad-thanatos cultists whose murder-motto is a spurious counterfeit. Lynn McGill gave his life willingly, as a soldier would, to save those around him. An act of selflessness. Do we see this at all on dramatic television? Except for Narnia recently, and the Lord of the Rings, where in recent film do we see this?

Maybe there is a change coming in the wind. I think so.