Our day of national mourning
Today, our national holiday is to memorialize those who have given their lives in military service to their nation. Often the phrase "in defense of our freedoms" is tossed in.
I have no problem honoring the dead. I am an admirer of many people who have now passed on, including many of those who, by living hard working productive lives of normalcy received little admiration while alive. We tend to take for granted the quiet folks who, day after day, decade after decade, just earn their living and try to create a nice living style for their families. We might classify them as our responsible, productive citizens. During their lifetimes, they faced a thousand crises, made untold difficult choices, took frightening risks, and faced the results of those choices. Millions of Americans have struggled through such lives, often facing the same difficulties day after day, finding joy when they could, but knuckling back down to the routine chores, often until death took them.
These are our American heroes and heroines. Few of them escaped days when they questioned whether living was worth all the pain it could entail. Few of them avoided the grief of losing friends and family members to death. Few escaped their own personal judgment that life didn't turn out as they had, as young people, hoped. All of them suffered through the almost constantly annoying decline of their own bodies. Yet, most of these Americans lived productive lives in peaceful interaction and trade with all the other people around them. Most tried hard to be personally responsible, hating to ask others for help, yet being so willing to help others when the need arose. As Henry David Thoreau said: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
In my mind, our traditional Memorial Day holiday is a day of national shame... a day on which we remember the millions of young lives wasted in military actions that should never have occurred. Not one of those honored today was a life given in defense of our nation from invaders. Not one was truly lost in defense of our freedoms. Those phrases, those descriptions are no more than the lies we tell in a feeble attempt to make the tremendous loss of our young people seem righteous, worthwhile, or meaningful. Lies. Aside from those who died in our own Civil War, our young men and women were all killed in foreign lands. Worse still, most died in foreign wars the American public opposed becoming involved in. Most died in foreign wars we never should have participated in, or instigated. Most died in foreign wars that solved nothing... and that actually created more conflict.
There is no way to avoid the damning conclusion that the individuals we honor on this holiday were wasted as "cannon fodder" by our power-mongering governmental leaders. Most of those killed were young... too young to resist the guilt-laden calls for "patriotism" and "duty", and too young to resist the lure of becoming part of our tough, macho, dominant military forces. Perhaps even worse is the damage to the psyches of those not killed... the injured, mutilated individuals and those who return with no visible injuries, feeling lucky and a little guilty that they survived intact, many of whom faced intolerable choices they will never resolve within themselves.
By our participation in Memorial Day, and Veterans Day, and frequent other ceremonial events honoring those who have fought or died in military action, we are coercing a new generation of our young people into future insane slaughters. Can we as a nation admit that is what we are doing to our children? Is it any wonder that our children unquestioningly respond to a call to arms, even when the need seems false to most of us?
We as a people, by permitting our government to glorify war through carefully crafted advertising and political manipulation, shame generation after generation of our young people into this despicable waste of young lives. Then we feel so bad about it that we continue it by glorifying the losses as sacrifices made for the rest of us. It is an unthinkable sham we're caught up in, unable to openly admit the truth, and unwilling to face the shame that we have institutionalized the unnecessary slaughter of so many of America's youth.
I urge us to certainly remember those who are gone, but to remember and honor them best by committing ourselves to ending the shameful slaughter. We need to resent the aggrandizement of our military. We need to stop participating in glorification of war. We need to stop our government from tossing our young people into harms way for reasons that make no sense to anyone... and we need to make it clear to our children that we oppose the aggressive, belligerent policies that have deliberately created conflicts where none need to have existed.
If, as adult American citizens, we can have the courage to stand up to the insanity and glorification of war, we can put an end to the disastrous policies of our government, and stop forcing our youth to pay the price for our neglect and meek obedience.
I have no problem honoring the dead. I am an admirer of many people who have now passed on, including many of those who, by living hard working productive lives of normalcy received little admiration while alive. We tend to take for granted the quiet folks who, day after day, decade after decade, just earn their living and try to create a nice living style for their families. We might classify them as our responsible, productive citizens. During their lifetimes, they faced a thousand crises, made untold difficult choices, took frightening risks, and faced the results of those choices. Millions of Americans have struggled through such lives, often facing the same difficulties day after day, finding joy when they could, but knuckling back down to the routine chores, often until death took them.
These are our American heroes and heroines. Few of them escaped days when they questioned whether living was worth all the pain it could entail. Few of them avoided the grief of losing friends and family members to death. Few escaped their own personal judgment that life didn't turn out as they had, as young people, hoped. All of them suffered through the almost constantly annoying decline of their own bodies. Yet, most of these Americans lived productive lives in peaceful interaction and trade with all the other people around them. Most tried hard to be personally responsible, hating to ask others for help, yet being so willing to help others when the need arose. As Henry David Thoreau said: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
In my mind, our traditional Memorial Day holiday is a day of national shame... a day on which we remember the millions of young lives wasted in military actions that should never have occurred. Not one of those honored today was a life given in defense of our nation from invaders. Not one was truly lost in defense of our freedoms. Those phrases, those descriptions are no more than the lies we tell in a feeble attempt to make the tremendous loss of our young people seem righteous, worthwhile, or meaningful. Lies. Aside from those who died in our own Civil War, our young men and women were all killed in foreign lands. Worse still, most died in foreign wars the American public opposed becoming involved in. Most died in foreign wars we never should have participated in, or instigated. Most died in foreign wars that solved nothing... and that actually created more conflict.
There is no way to avoid the damning conclusion that the individuals we honor on this holiday were wasted as "cannon fodder" by our power-mongering governmental leaders. Most of those killed were young... too young to resist the guilt-laden calls for "patriotism" and "duty", and too young to resist the lure of becoming part of our tough, macho, dominant military forces. Perhaps even worse is the damage to the psyches of those not killed... the injured, mutilated individuals and those who return with no visible injuries, feeling lucky and a little guilty that they survived intact, many of whom faced intolerable choices they will never resolve within themselves.
By our participation in Memorial Day, and Veterans Day, and frequent other ceremonial events honoring those who have fought or died in military action, we are coercing a new generation of our young people into future insane slaughters. Can we as a nation admit that is what we are doing to our children? Is it any wonder that our children unquestioningly respond to a call to arms, even when the need seems false to most of us?
We as a people, by permitting our government to glorify war through carefully crafted advertising and political manipulation, shame generation after generation of our young people into this despicable waste of young lives. Then we feel so bad about it that we continue it by glorifying the losses as sacrifices made for the rest of us. It is an unthinkable sham we're caught up in, unable to openly admit the truth, and unwilling to face the shame that we have institutionalized the unnecessary slaughter of so many of America's youth.
I urge us to certainly remember those who are gone, but to remember and honor them best by committing ourselves to ending the shameful slaughter. We need to resent the aggrandizement of our military. We need to stop participating in glorification of war. We need to stop our government from tossing our young people into harms way for reasons that make no sense to anyone... and we need to make it clear to our children that we oppose the aggressive, belligerent policies that have deliberately created conflicts where none need to have existed.
If, as adult American citizens, we can have the courage to stand up to the insanity and glorification of war, we can put an end to the disastrous policies of our government, and stop forcing our youth to pay the price for our neglect and meek obedience.
posted by Robert Ronald Smith at 1:24 PM
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