Veteran's Day is a tough day for me to navigate.
How do you thank someone for risking or giving their lives for a lie, for a mistake, for an oil company, for an empire that has long since abandoned the work of serving its people? How do you say that you would never be willing to unquestioningly put yourself in harm's way for such corrupt, poorly planned and deceptively articulated causes? How do you say 'thank you' when you’d give up your citizenship and leave the country before you'd give your life or offer your child's life to sustain U.S. global hegemony?
Can gratitude cohabitate with the knowledge that regardless of the "threats" at hand, you know that in a less demagogic, less corrupt, less greedy and more incredulous world, we'd have far fewer people to thank for their sacrifices on Veteran's day. It is common sense that military men and women would be far better served by not being sent into harm's way than by any amount of cheap grace we can heap upon them having sent them to war needlessly, out of intellectual lethargy more than conviction, having had no tangible costs imposed on us, taking the knee-jerk patriotic easy way out. When we are asked to honor the service of our military men and women are we not also being asked to honor militarism? How can we hate war and love war at the same time?
Isn't it inherently condescending and disingenuous to say thank you to someone for doing something you are unwilling to do, something you know is folly, something you know is perpetuated by the skillful parlaying of the manipulative power of anachronistic mythology?
Can gratitude cohabitate with the knowledge that regardless of the "threats" at hand, you know that in a less demagogic, less corrupt, less greedy and more incredulous world, we'd have far fewer people to thank for their sacrifices on Veteran's day. It is common sense that military men and women would be far better served by not being sent into harm's way than by any amount of cheap grace we can heap upon them having sent them to war needlessly, out of intellectual lethargy more than conviction, having had no tangible costs imposed on us, taking the knee-jerk patriotic easy way out. When we are asked to honor the service of our military men and women are we not also being asked to honor militarism? How can we hate war and love war at the same time?
Isn't it inherently condescending and disingenuous to say thank you to someone for doing something you are unwilling to do, something you know is folly, something you know is perpetuated by the skillful parlaying of the manipulative power of anachronistic mythology?
In the end I feel like I should just be saying 'Sorry'. I'm sorry our nation can't think of anything better to do with your lives than send you to far away lands to kill and subdue people who will hate you for it. I'm sorry we'll pay you so poorly to do it. I'm sorry we'll often fail to care for you when you come back broken. I'm sorry we'll misplace your body or lose it entirely. I'm sorry we'll lie about how you died to cover up our mistakes. I'm sorry because I believe in my heart of hearts that your act of service, an act that will no doubt color the rest of your life, was a terrible waste of life, of money and of opportunity.
So, like I said, it's a tough day for me to navigate.
*although arguments could be made about WWI and WWII having been wholly being avoidable massive wastes of human life, I can't make them so I limit my comments to the militarism of my lifetime.
*although arguments could be made about WWI and WWII having been wholly being avoidable massive wastes of human life, I can't make them so I limit my comments to the militarism of my lifetime.
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