Memorial Day
(Corpsman Vernon Wike tries to detect a heartbeat from a fallen Marine. Battle for Hill 881, First Battle Khe Sanh, 05/05/67. (photo: Catherine Leroy)
Reader Supported News | Perspective
t is Memorial Day, time for speeches and gatherings and tributes to The Fallen and editorials about valor and the paths of glory.
From Lexington and Concord to Anzio and Normandy to Pork Chop Hill to Khe Sanh and Fallujah and Marjeh, the road of honored dead and righteousness is mapped out for us all to see and revere. To paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, it seems to be the American way of learning geography.
Truth is, I don't know what to write that would make sense of this day. There are only what, two days a year we make death a holiday? One is Halloween and the other is Memorial Day. I wonder, would that be defined as satire or irony?
Memorial Day is a long weekend of picnics and backyard barbecues in remembrance of soldiers and celebration of the coming summer. It reminds me of the after-funeral meal scene in The Big Chill when Michael says, "Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come."
I think Memorial Day is something we created to make ourselves feel better about those who die because we can't figure out how to stop war. It's like a National Day of Atonement without having to actually atone.
It's about survivor's guilt and finding distraction by giving honor to dishonorable purpose and valor to violence. War is our addiction. War is our recreation and procreation.
Memorial Day is that moment in the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller when Nately says, "Anything worth living for is worth dying for." And the old man replies, "And anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for." We can't quite make up our minds or get it right so we crawl inside a slogan or catchphrase to ease the pain.
It's like a patriotic Groundhog Day. We keep doing it over and over. Maybe we should incorporate the Punxsutawney Phil ritual? Think about it. What if we met at Arlington Cemetery every year and exhumed a soldier and held their remains up to the light? If we see their shadow, we know there will be six more decades of war.
Yes, I know. I'm being sacrilegious and disrespectful but aren't we all when we pretend there is something noble in this thing called war? Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
We don't want war but cry that it has been forced upon us and there is nothing we can do until we have finished off the enemy who just won't leave us alone. It is terrible but sometimes to make peace you have to make war. Peace is hard.
As Captain Black Adder said: "But the real reason for the whole thing was that is was just too much effort NOT to have a war."
So we need a day to remind us that war is the great employer. War is what gives us freedom as long as you don't complain about dying. War is a noble rite of passage. War gives us meaning and purpose. War is honor. God is war. Amen.
So it goes.
We pretend to be sane in an insane effort.
It is Memorial Day.
Again.
And again.
And again.
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Comments
And,,,,,,
No need for a sword or revolver,
You'll fight him with words and a pen,
For he is just there to confuse you,
You've seen it again and again..
For he has no need to pull triggers,
He has no need to take lives,
For the others will all do it for him,
Now you've met him,,, the father of lies.
Yes,, there is a battle to fight,, the battle of ideas. The battle for the simple truth in all nations. Truth in all reporting. The continued success of writers such as yourself who stand up and complain,, and ask the world to make more sense.
-- Gary
Quoting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzXgKcs6-lQ
As a Mexican-American whose ancestry goes back to year 1598 New Mexico, I was drafted during the Korean War. I was led to believe "America" was the land of the free. I was born and raised in an entirely Mexican-American community that went back several centuries and didn't know what racism was.
Boy! did I get a surprise. Signs of No Blacks, Mexicans or dogs allowed dotted the filthy Texas towns and villages. The more eastward one traveled, the more racism one met.
In Korea, I respected the enemy more than these southern racist trash - officer, NCO and soldier alike. I came back home bitter and disgusted at the treatment blacks received.
I still carry that hatred and distrust!
Arizona, are you listening?
This is my slow definition of why we go THERE to kill.
We have corrupt judges, lawyers, === i.eo justices in OUR courts unless you are connected . . . you know the story.
Yet we justify fighting other countries to correct their errors --- oh any excuse to drop bombs (drones now) --
Actually we just go WHERE THEY HAVE OIL --- oh - that just slipped out
VN? not even sure about the WHY -- but we sure had idiots in Congress who sent us there for their profit!!!!
It is a day of atonement for me, atonement for my many friend killed in battle, atonement for the killinging I inflicted, atonement for all who died deserving to live, who fought us in order to protect their homelands, their freedoms, their rights to exist in defiance of our greedy wills.
Rara Avis: those who fell to preserve the freedoms and quality of your life may have been sacrificed pointlessly since your freedoms are perishing, being murdered by a run amok military industrial complex of corporations. The quality of our lives is being subverted by the endless appetite for war spending and we see failing health systems, schools, roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and those driven out of work face increasing suffering. The struggle for something higher wasn't the oceans of bs that we are forced to swim in. Face it: We've been had as have our vets and dead heroes.
Inclusive of both weak and hardy
Yet the elite don't believe in Altruism
And the poor often die ere the party
Rousing fight songs and proclamations of glory
Do not begin to tell the whole story
As malevolent men pick "call to arms" locks
Sending "someone's baby once" home in a box
Now as much as I hoped, it all seems a crock
The same old Memorial Day with the new guy
Barrack
Not all of those who gave their lives for what this nation is supposed to be died in vain. Eventually, our nation would have had to face doing a Ghandi like submission to Nazism and Hitler or to fight to preserve something that is the antithesis of that idea of what we are supposed to be. We chose to fight. We mark and do not celebrate Memorial Day. Take some flowers to the grave of one of the fallen today. Don't rejoice. Don't shout for more blood. But be grateful. Make what happened to them meaningful. And know our ability to complain so vehemently about the present regime is a mark of what they did. Let us separate our legitimate complaints about what our nation is today and in the detrmination to make the deaths of so many mean something, pursure a nation of truly liberty and justice for all here at home.
And you have Ghandi all wrong. He was a fighter...in his way. And he won. I don't know if, as a civilization, we are capable of his greatness, but surely we could do better than we have.
There has to be a better way.
And after all, we're only ordinary men.
Me, and you.
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do.
Forward he cried from the rear
And the front rank died.
And the general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side.
Black and blue
And who knows which is which and who is who.
Up and down.
But in the end it's only round and round.
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words
The poster bearer cried.
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There's room for you inside."
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