Memorial Day: Spitting on the Dead

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In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

-Ernest Hemingway

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.

Hmmmm..

But what do the dead say?

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god I'm glad I'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? Did they say I'm glad I died to make the world safe for democracy? Did they say that I like death better than losing liberty? Did any of them ever say it's good to think I got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? Did any of them ever say look at me I'm dead but I died for decency and that's better than being alive? Did any of them ever say here I am I've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? Did any of them say hurray I died for womanhood and I'm happy see how I sing even though my mouth is choked with worms?

Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn't know what death is. He isn't able to judge. He only knows about living. He doesn't know anything about dying.

If he is a fool and believes in death before dishonor let him go ahead and die.

The mawkish, strident adulation for fallen American soldiers--mostly sons and daughters of the underclass--reaches a crescendo during perverted "holidays' like memorial Day, as   the propaganda mills of the Empire work double time to reinforce the prevailing chauvinist myths that imprison the American consciousness from cradle to grave. It's all part of the cynical propaganda playbook used by the elites to keep the "great unwashed" doing their bidding.   I say cynical because the upper tiers, while seeming to partake of the reverence, cold-bloodedly manipulate people's most fundamental emotions to serve their ends: bonds of love and gratitude for the fallen; the deeply ingrained, tribal love and respect of country; and hatred and fear toward "the other"-- our designated enemies du jour, all are marshaled to keep the population in the "right frame of mind."

While trying to inject some sanity into this self-congratulatory orgy, many antiwar activists are often surprised if not shocked by the fierceness with which some wounded vets (and their kin) defend the goodness of their mission. They should not be. It is a huge tragedy, alright. And it's perfectly human. For what could be more tragic than giving up your life or your health in the service of a criminal enterprise? After all people who have invested so much, who lost precious limbs or their sight, who suffered grotesque disfigurements, who witnessed the death of close comrades, are not the kind of audience to welcome with open arms someone telling them they went through all that hell for nothing, and, that, to top it all off, they were not only terribly unlucky but damn foolish.   It's a classical case of cursing the messenger, of finding the Matrix a lot more comforting to live with than the truth.

We might as well get rid of Memorial Day, for all the good it does us. Originally "Decoration Day," the last Monday in May has been the designated time for us to remember the war dead and honor their sacrifice -- while, perhaps, taking in the lessons of the many conflicts that have marked our history as a free nation. In line with the modern trend of universal trivialization, however, the holiday has been paganized to mark the beginning of summer, when we get out the barbecue grill and have the neighbors over for hamburgers and beer. As for contemplating the meaning of the day in the context of our current and recent wars, that is left to those few pundits who pay attention to foreign policy issues, or else to writers of paeans to the "Greatest Generation" -- World War II being the only modern war our panegyrists deign to recall, since it is relatively untouched by the ravages of historical revisionism.

Indeed, as far as our wars are concerned, the very concept of historical memory has vanished from the post-9/11 world. It seems the earth was born anew on September 11, 2001, and only ragged remnants of our mystified past -- mostly from World War II and the Civil War -- survived the purge. In the new version our victories are exaggerated and glorified, while our defeats -- e.g. Vietnam, Korea, our nasty little covert wars in Central and South America -- are not even mentioned, let alone considered in depth.

The abolition of historical memory is one of the worst aspects of modernity: it is certainly the most depressing. For the modern man, it's an effort to recall what happened last week, never mind the last century. The news cycle spins madly and ever-faster, and the result is that we are lost in the blur of Now: for all intents and purposes, we are a people without a history, who recall past events -- if we remember them at all -- as one would summon a vague and confusing dream.