With American Sniper, we delve into what can only be described as the culture of the silent majority. The fly-over land of America, who sends their sons and daughters into the fray to attack and sacrifice their lives so that the mass culture can create images of resentment and scorn against their country. It must be remarked, being a decade and a half since September 11^th, as well over a decade after the Iraq War, how badly the resentment against America lie underneath the surface. And how the struggle to confront a barbaric culture which murders innocents in exchange for heaven is used to roguishly advance the cause of the demolition of the American foundation. All to say, The Cold War did not end simply with the failure of the Soviet Union. There remained scores of unhatched eggs ready to break open and vilify the United States as a violent and oppressive stamp on the human race, versus the expression of its highest hopes with the reality still unfinished in completeness.

Rarely, then, do we see images in the mass culture of rodeos and of people speaking highly of the country they are born into. We may think of this as base patriotism, i.e. jingoism, yet America is exceptional for many reasons – one of which is that it is not a nation of kinsmen, but a nation that is an ideal into itself. The nationalism then of America is one that is principally philosophical. For Chris Kyle, the sniper, in the film to matter-of-factly state his ambition to become a Navy Seal because he believes he is defending the greatest country on Earth, his words are backed by the principles of advancing human liberty in the human race, and combating those who seek to submit the world to their ideals, as Islamic zealotry upholds, is to fulfill his purpose. He may not be able to articulate this in as many words, but that is not the point.

American Sniper, demonstrates in fact, how isolated America is from the brutishness of a world where there exists people that want them murdered. Maybe not even them personally, lest they defend the American ideal. We can already, in fact, bear witness to the onslaught against the American foundation very recently, as police forces in Wisconsin have been used to invade the private homes of those with differing political opinions; and how the legitimated force of the state has been used to silent opposing political organisms by questioning their tax-deferred validity. All to say, it is refreshing to see in American Sniper a world which is American-positive, and the challenges of these individual lives in trying to assimilate back into the reality, after being addicted, really to having to stare death in the face every day.