Don’t romanticize war. Look war in the face: the shattered lives and broken bodies, the burned houses and stolen property.
The horror of war falls disproportionally on the poor who fight to protect the assets and line the pockets of those who would deny basic civil rights to the “other” — blacks, women, Hispanic, muslim, gay, Jew, Asian, and Native — even as the rich, landed, and privileged buy their way out of service, off the front line, and into Ivy League schools.
Memorial Day is a fantasy; a gloss of flags and bunting, mowed lawns and backyard cookouts. It’s a fanfare for the next war; a glorification and a manipulation to obscure the truth. No one was freed, and every dollar plowed into weapons was stolen from public school budgets, housing, road repair, and health care.
War is a crime. Those who steal property and kill those they do not know, in a country they cannot find on a map, for a cause they cannot articulate, based on a history they do not know, are not engaged in a noble cause, but a crime.
You want to fight for freedom? Great. Act local. Drive people to the polls. Stand up for the rights of women, trans people, religious minorities, and the disabled. Help the poor and homeless, the foster kids and single moms. Pick up trash and demand police accountability. Stand up to the bullies, racists, Proud Boys, Nazis, and fascists in your neighborhood, on social media, on TV, and in your state legislature.
Do that, and nothing good is destroyed, while lives are saved and never lost.
2 comments:
I guess you'd rather live in a slave-owning country and possibly BE a slave. Or be speaking Japanese, German or Russian.Or worse, being gassed because you were gay, Roma, Jewish or Catholic. Or bowing as a good subject does, to a sociopath-king living an ocean away.
You think American troops fought for equality and freedom?
Not mostly.
The Revolutionary War was a battle that kept women, native people, and blacks politically and economically disenfranchised — a situation that prevailed for all three groups well into the 20th Century.
It was US troops that crushed America’s native people, helped steal their land, and intern their leaders.
250,000 American troops died in the US Civil War fighting to *preserve* the brutality and exploitation of slavery.
That’s more dead Confederate traitors killed who were fighting FOR slavery than all US. soldiers killed in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, World War I, Korea, Vietnam, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan COMBINED.
During World War II, US Troops were the folks rounding up Japanese Americans and herding them into internment prison camps and abetting the theft of their farms, stores, and homes. The Army didn’t round up Germans and Italians; just the Japanese.
The US Armed forces were segregated all the way through WWII and really into Korea.
The US military wasn’t fighting for black, Asian, or religious freedom; they were fundamentally opposed to it and -— judging by the complexion of the leaders at the top of the military (counting major generals and up) — still have a way to go.
See >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States_Armed_Forces
See >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation
See >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
But hey, the war against racism is STILL being fought.
How’s it going from your home front?
Did you march against Trump or stand with the “very fine” Nazis in Charlottesville?
Did you support or oppose pulling down the KKKonfederate monuments to terror and slavery, and do you support teaching the history of American racism in schools?
How about our troops? Are they watching Fox news and flying "thin blue line" flags of fascism, or are they standing arm in arm, off-duty, in support of black equality, anti-Asian discrimination, gay inclusion, and Jewish and Muslim civil rights?
How about you? What channel is your TV turned to? What are you doing to fight the never-ending battle?
Because the troops... they've got a pretty spotty record.
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