Memorial Day 2019: a Challenging Perspective
by Lawrence Wines It really bothers me that "honoring the service of our veterans" has become a door-opener for lemming-like support of the warconomy. Memorial Day was devised as a way to support widows and orphans of Union dead from the Civil War. By extension, because we keep having wars and so many people show-up to get killed in them, Memorial Day continued its purpose to honor the fallen of all our wars. That's not meant to diminish recognition of the necessity of military response to global fascism in the Second World War, when the outcome would determine what kind of world we would have. Nor can we be deluded into believing that valor, bravery, and sacrifice were unique to that war. Those human traits can be found in every generation, and we should recognize how problematic that is: because battlefield sacrifices are made, at terrible cost, in all manner of conflicts that influence nothing greater than which group of rich manipulators will be given the upper ha