 |
| Honor Flight, 2015 |
My editor asked if I'd be writing a Memorial Day column and I surprised us both by saying no. First, I'm tired. Second, I think I've already done my best to honor the holiday 10 years ago, writing about Wyatt Eisenhauer, and anything I'd write now wouldn't be half as good.
But the holiday is still here, and I thought I'd mark it by sharing this 2010 Memorial Day column, which asks a question even more relevant today. To take you back, the Tea Party movement had begun the year before, and I was amazed to see common-sense, vastly-beneficial government programs, like ObamaCare, drawing these shrieks of quivering right wing outrage. It was a portion of the column, back when it filled a page and had several items. A reminder that Donald Trump wasn't inflicted upon the United States. Rather our country conjured him up, like a beast from hell.
But the holiday is still here, and I thought I'd mark it by sharing this 2010 Memorial Day column, which asks a question even more relevant today. To take you back, the Tea Party movement had begun the year before, and I was amazed to see common-sense, vastly-beneficial government programs, like ObamaCare, drawing these shrieks of quivering right wing outrage. It was a portion of the column, back when it filled a page and had several items. A reminder that Donald Trump wasn't inflicted upon the United States. Rather our country conjured him up, like a beast from hell.
When we honor the war dead on Memorial Day, we naturally assume that we are doing something for the fallen. By our remembering those who gave their lives for this country, it implies that they somehow benefit, when of course they are dead, and beyond either benefit or harm from the living world.
No, it seems clear, if you think about it, that though we are honoring them, it is not the fallen, but we, the living, who benefit. They are helping us. How? I believe we benefit by being reminded that, despite our conflicts and divisions, we are still, as the pledge says, "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
One nation that people gave their lives to support. While there are pacifists opposed to war, the general opinion is that it is good that young Americans serve their country, and noble that they fight and sometimes die to ensure its security.
So here's my Memorial Day question: if we approve of the idea that some Americans sacrifice their lives for their country — they willingly give all they have and all they might ever have — then why are so many Americans so broken up because the government asks them to make some far smaller sacrifice, such as pay taxes? Why do they gather in public to shudder in unashamed outrage that part of their bounty is siphoned away to benefit the same nation that other people are asked to die for?No, it seems clear, if you think about it, that though we are honoring them, it is not the fallen, but we, the living, who benefit. They are helping us. How? I believe we benefit by being reminded that, despite our conflicts and divisions, we are still, as the pledge says, "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
One nation that people gave their lives to support. While there are pacifists opposed to war, the general opinion is that it is good that young Americans serve their country, and noble that they fight and sometimes die to ensure its security.
Not to inject a political note into the summer fun and sober reflection of the day. But it hardly seems fair. Do your part.
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 2010.
Amen, brother.
ReplyDeleteThey don't want to pay taxes because they actually hate government.
ReplyDeleteTo them, everything is socialism.
But the taxes to build the roads, the fire departments, the police departments, the libraries & schools are all a type of socialism, so they try to get rid of them.
But no society could survive without any of those things or if they were all privatized.
Whenever they get into power, they prove their hatred of all government, by wrecking the government & then the sane people must defeat them & put people back in charge to straighten out the government!
They don't call their "Democrats are libtards" MAGA buddies when their house in on fire, they call the fire department. They don't live on their savings when they retire, they apply for social security. They only hate government programs at tax time.
ReplyDeleteOn days like Memorial Day, July 4, and Veterans Day, I always think of Andy Rooney, whose career as a journalist and writer lasted for almost seven decades, and who worked for CBS radio and TV for most of that time span. We had something in common...we were both curmudgeons. But, unlike me, he was good at it.
ReplyDeleteWhen he wrote about D-Day in 2005, he mourned those who were lost, and he said:
"There's only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection, during which we consider what they did for us."
"They died."
"We use the phrase 'gave their lives,' but they didn't give their lives. Their lives were taken from them."
I have never forgotten those last six words.
I'd wish all of you a happy Memorial Day, but that seems wrong somehow. Like being Jewish, and wishing one of your co-religionists a happy Yom Kippur. Instead, we always say: "Good yontiff"...have a good day, or a good "holy day"...which, when you think about it, is what this day really is. Or should be.
Don't sell yourself short, Grizz, you're a perfectly adequate amateur curmudgeon.
DeleteIn my six and a half years in the Navy, I was only in danger on one occasion of having my life taken from me due to combat. I was assigned to a Landing Craft Utility, which served as lighterage in carrying beer and food from ships in Danang harbor to the beach. Once and once only we were dispatched with a deckful of bombs to leave Danang, go to sea, find a specific river, and bring the bombs to Hue, which at the time was still under American control. The river was pretty shallow, so we had to go at full speed (which wasn't much} to avoid grounding. At one point, I watched in helpless wonderment as an old lady paddling a tiny wicker boat near the shore, seemed to be lazily watching our passing, not noticing our craft's wake behind us, curling round and approaching her tiny craft. The wake lifted her several feet in the air and dumped her in the river. We couldn't have stopped to aid her; it would have been insane. Had I heard that the old lady's relatives had all signed up with the Viet Cong the next day, it would not have surprised me,. And if some one of those relatives or some other disaffected beneficiary of our military assistance had thrown a grenade on our deck (it would have been a prodigious toss) and blown us to smithereens, I couldn't complain, though I would not have given my life willingly even in those circumstances. I feel for those of my compatriots who died in our various wars and for those innocents we accidentally killed and even for those deluded souls who lost their lives opposing our rightful or not so rightful causes. Were we truly rational beings, war would never be the final answer. How come it is almost always the first one?
ReplyDeletejohn
Trump's comment about those who served tells me ALL I need to know about the man.
ReplyDeleteA memorial can be a simple reminder or a warning. The ones who would have others pay taxes, or serve in the armed forces are the same who rally to Drumpfs side. My first memory of the modern Tea Party was at an Obama inauguration, but I forget which one. A small group had gathered in Virginia, straw hats with Lipton teabags hung about the brim, long guns slung from their shoulders and pictures of Obama planted around them, his face x'ed out in some manner. I saw it as a warning. Even before the ascendance of the Cowardly Liar, there were pitiful snowflakes venting their perceived injustices. The cadre of the ignorant was not created by Drumpf, it was coopted. And while the Vietnam Wall is both a reminder of the fallen, it is a warning to the nation, a symbol of the folly of war. January 6 is as stark a warning as ever preceded a conflict. MAGA didn't remember the fallen yesterday, they were looking forward to November and January 2025.
ReplyDelete