Memorial Day is too early this year. From what I can tell, it’s actually the earliest it can be. Fascinating, I guess, to some. It just seems odd for it to fall earlier than the birthday of one of our fellow bloggers (which one, I won’t tell you). But, since it is fast upon us, I guess a meditation of sorts is in order.
We have a lot of military-centered holidays. Too many for a supposed peaceful nation. I used to wonder how the Klingons of Star Trek, notably a warlike people, found their way to being a space-faring nation. All honor codes and duels and war, and whatnot, how have you managed to also support the sciences. But, as I got older, I learned that it’s really not that difficult. In fact, most of our science since the second of the world wars has come directly from our desire to kill people more effectively and efficiently. A straight line from fighting in Germany, to fighting in Korea, to fighting in Vietnam, to a side quest in Grenada, to Iraq, Afghanistan, and I guess now in Iran. We just love fighting wars, and all our tech and science is either from those efforts or geared towards those efforts. The internet, on which you are reading this? Of course, it came out of DARPA. Al Gore just made it commercial. Fuckin internet, man, just like your favorite band, selling out.
I have a friend who served an entire career in the Navy (we are old). He always used to bellyache about Memorial Day, because “It isn’t for the troops. It’s for the fallen.” So we have one holiday for everybody who has served, and one holiday for those who died. Luckily they’re on opposite sides of the calendar so we can tell them apart. And it’s true, there’s too much jingo military shit going on around Memorial Day. Because if you wanted to celebrate or note the sacrifices made in war (or otherwise) by our soldiers, you may think twice about what got them killed in the first place.
Soldiers don’t go to war because they want to. They go to war because the president told them to (congress never tells them to anymore, which is a shame, considering the whole constitution thing). And they don’t die because they want to, they die because they were sent to sacrifice their lives for “the good of the country.” They die because the people on the other side of the globe who are more impacted by these wars than we will ever be, decided they didn’t want to go out without a fight. They die due to tactical and strategic mistakes because the only people who want to start wars are too stupid to think out the rest of it.
I guess we’re theoretically at war again. I’m not sure because the news tells me it’s not a war, it’s something else. It started with airplanes bombing shit, then just turned into two countries being mad at each other and staring at each other. Well, not countries, as much as a president who can barely tell us which drawing is the elephant, and a country that’s lasted longer than most of the civilizations on earth. People have died, many of whom are not in fact soldiers. Lest we forget, war has casualties who are not recognized on this day. There isn’t a day to recognize them. America doesn’t give a shit about civilians. How many civilians died in Iraq, Vietnam, Korea? Nobody knows because nobody fucking counted.
I have a good number of friends and acquaintances who have served this broken country, and a few of them have died doing it. Comes with the territory of growing up in a lower economic demographic than the median American. College, for some, drugs, for way more, or the military. Those who serve and die deserve the be remembered, and as far as I am able, they are remembered. But, the truth is, we could also just stand to have fewer wars. We need to come to grips with the fact that this country is a fucking warlike country.
