Читать книгу The Warrior's Manifesto - Daniel Modell - Страница 7

SOCIETY MAKES A peculiar offer to its citizenry: we have a job, if you want it. Here it is.

You must stand between the predators and the innocents of the world and hold the line with your blood.

Pay is modest—and rendered grudgingly.

You will labor across hours, long and ungodly, that will test the limits of exhaustion and tedium.

Family will suffer your absence. You will miss many meaningful moments.

You will find yourself shipped to places far away, forbidding, forgotten or assigned to patrol streets savaged by violence, poverty, madness. Your presence will not be welcomed.

You will see tragedy, hopelessness, and evil at depths that will rend your soul. You will be expected somehow, some way, to keep yourself whole as you drown in these so that you may confront them again the next day.

You will be called filthy names. In the course of your duties, you will be attacked, targeted, challenged. Some will try to kill you. They may succeed.

The antipathy of the press and the animosity of the public will flank you without end until your final tour of duty. Your every action, every decision, every remark will be the subject of unremitting—and unforgiving—scrutiny.

Politicians will exploit you—for good and ill—and sacrifice you to expediency once the exploitation is done.

Your mistakes, though honest, will never be forgiven—ever.

You will save many, but the one you lose will haunt you until your dying day.

You will form bonds of brotherhood with your comrades, wordless in their abiding depth, forged in the rough bravery that circumstance compels. You will bury many of those brothers.

You will begin each day knowing that you may never see another.

This is the job that society offers its citizenry. Do you want it?

For most, the answer is an obvious one: no. But for a few, the answer is just as obvious: yes.

This is for the few who answer yes.