Not Gonna be Popular (redux)
(This post was originally published on DU1, on 5/30/2011 here: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/TygrBright/192
It not only remains valid, the intensity has increased.)
Everything I say in this post does not apply to anyone who ever voted "yes" on a mill rate increase or bond issue, or to anyone who believes that the solution to America's future lies in paying more taxes, for the right investments in America's people, not in giving bigger tax breaks to corporations and billionaires.
Got that? Okay, on with the rant...
I have had it up to the back teeth and beyond with parades.
I have reached the point where I want to retch when I hear bands playing service theme music, or loudspeakers braying out patriotic platitudes.
"Taps" fails to stir any pride; fluttery little flaggie things cause no lift of the heart.
The phrase "thank you for your service," particularly when uttered by those who clearly believe that they are paying too many taxes, brown people and poor people are slime-sucking parasites, and America's salvation lies in the Freefucking Market, makes me want to pound someone.
I wouldn't do it, of course, because I am (seriously! honest, I am!) a pacifist.
My Dad was a Marine.
I respect those of my fellow citizens who undertake the difficult and unrewarding (in the material sense) task of carrying out the grimy, violent, unspeakable end of America's foreign policy.
Just because someone enlists in the armed forces does not make them an unthinking accomplice to the slaughterhouse of failed diplomacy. Many intelligent, courageous, honorable and even idealistic individuals give up years of their lives and hand over their freedom in order to form the final barrier of flesh between their loved ones and the devastation of war.
I happen to disagree with many if not most of the decisions that result in those men and women being sent to do jobs that result in death and misery and destruction for others and, not infrequently, for themselves and their comrades. I happen to believe that the management of this nation's military resources has gone from poor to catastrophic in the last twenty years. I happen to deplore and oppose the extent to which our economy has become dependent upon the profiteering of the military-industrial complex.
But I still respect those who make sacrifices of their time, their talents, their freedom, their health and limbs and sanity and even their very lives for the ideals this nation was founded to uphold. (Whether it continues to uphold them is relevant, but not to the sacrifices these men and women have made, are making, every day, for me and my fellow-citizens.)
However.
It fills me with a soaring, incendiary maelstrom of rage that we can put on pretty parades and mouth speeches and hold sales to sell cheap plastic crap in the name of "honoring their service" or "remembering their sacrifice"...
...when we can't make the simple and comparatively painless sacrifice of paying enough taxes to provide decent medical care, family benefits, or keep our promises for educational benefits and other support to these same "heroes."
FUCK me. I see the Plaza on any given day, full of the vacant-eyed, abandoned wreckage of our military policy. I see the men and women making do with outdated prosthetic technology, with no resources for treating their PTSD, I see the families grieving the loss of suicided veterans, I see the shitty conditions disabled veterans are living in...
Because we, you and me, my fellow citizens, are willing to go along with the corporate fascists who want the endless profit stream of war, without having to pay the true and full costs of war. We're so damn' quick to holler "USA, USA, USA!" and applaud the uniforms, and chatter about how cool our military is and how we're gonna kick ASS "over there" wherever "there" may be, but when it comes time to ante up to pay the bills? Where are we then?
I'll tell you where we are, we're at some fracking bagger rally whinging about our crushing tax burden and how the "welfare" state is destroying our nation's giant intangible penis of power.
That's where we are.
And then, once a year, having left our veterans to their own devices, to inadequate care and broken promises, we toddle on down to the Mall or to some carefully-mown cemetary full of acres and acres of uniformly-spaced white markers to solemnly "honor" our servicemen and -women.
AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE.
That is all.
disgustedly,
Bright
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