A day late, but...remember this day - In Memoriam, June 6, 1944
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - English philosopher Edmund Burke (this is the real quote. The usual Internet variation is a pop culture change to it.)
I have to write much more, some day, about my real feelings toward the military, which are rather unlike those I find all too often to both the right and left. To the right I find a bunch of mindless "my country right or wrong" claptrap and nonsense, but just as often to the left I find a bunch of mindless and often gutless wishing that the world were other than it is so that we wouldn't need the things we do.
Many of us often say that most people are sheep, and even coin the term "sheeple" to refer to them. And we're right. But that doesn't mean they deserve to become mutton. And only the most absurdly and unrealistically idealistic would deny that there ARE evil people in the world. Such are the wolves among the sheep pack and they will make mutton or, far worse, slaves out of the meek if allowed. As long as there are sheep, and wolves, and I suspect both will be around as long as people are humans, then we will need sheep dogs.
Last year after Memorial day I was talking with someone and quoted something I read last Memorial day from
exnomine who summed up his feelings toward veterans by saying, "Thank you...and I'm sorry." I was shocked that my listener didn't immediately understand my meaning. It's an utter abomination that the politicians we have waste the effort and sacrifice of some of our best on petty military-industrial enrichment, territorial feuds better solved diplomatically, what amounts to Imperialism, hell the list could go on and on. IIRC, and he can chime in if he likes, exnomine's post last year referred to talking to a veteran of WW II who commented that they did a noble thing, stopping a power mad genocidal dictator from taking over the world, but now taking over the world seems to be the goal of the US government.
All I can say to veterans who fought and served to protect something that was (and can be again) noble and wonderful, as we see it decaying into something not so terribly unlike much they sought to protect it from, is a profound, "I'm sorry." The "thank you" hardly seems worth as much, but is no less sincere.
Let us honor them not only with remembrance, but with grim determination to do all in our power to see that the shining light they protected does not tarnish and become what they fought against, that we will uphold in the press and the Internet and at the ballot box those ideals, that their sacrifices will not have been in vane, and one day they will never again be called to have their sacrifice and service perverted to aggression and vendetta.
For all the justified praise heaped on that generation, I'm not sure they were at heart much different than later ones. Later generations, mine included, became comparatively soft and lax because we could because of the world those grim and determined people helped preserve. When necessity calls, some portion of humanity has always risen to the heights of nobility. Unfortunately, it is the depths of evil that have often provoked these necessities.
Would we have done as much? I don't know. I hope to all the gods we never find out.
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I have to write much more, some day, about my real feelings toward the military, which are rather unlike those I find all too often to both the right and left. To the right I find a bunch of mindless "my country right or wrong" claptrap and nonsense, but just as often to the left I find a bunch of mindless and often gutless wishing that the world were other than it is so that we wouldn't need the things we do.
Many of us often say that most people are sheep, and even coin the term "sheeple" to refer to them. And we're right. But that doesn't mean they deserve to become mutton. And only the most absurdly and unrealistically idealistic would deny that there ARE evil people in the world. Such are the wolves among the sheep pack and they will make mutton or, far worse, slaves out of the meek if allowed. As long as there are sheep, and wolves, and I suspect both will be around as long as people are humans, then we will need sheep dogs.
Last year after Memorial day I was talking with someone and quoted something I read last Memorial day from
exnomine who summed up his feelings toward veterans by saying, "Thank you...and I'm sorry." I was shocked that my listener didn't immediately understand my meaning. It's an utter abomination that the politicians we have waste the effort and sacrifice of some of our best on petty military-industrial enrichment, territorial feuds better solved diplomatically, what amounts to Imperialism, hell the list could go on and on. IIRC, and he can chime in if he likes, exnomine's post last year referred to talking to a veteran of WW II who commented that they did a noble thing, stopping a power mad genocidal dictator from taking over the world, but now taking over the world seems to be the goal of the US government.All I can say to veterans who fought and served to protect something that was (and can be again) noble and wonderful, as we see it decaying into something not so terribly unlike much they sought to protect it from, is a profound, "I'm sorry." The "thank you" hardly seems worth as much, but is no less sincere.
Let us honor them not only with remembrance, but with grim determination to do all in our power to see that the shining light they protected does not tarnish and become what they fought against, that we will uphold in the press and the Internet and at the ballot box those ideals, that their sacrifices will not have been in vane, and one day they will never again be called to have their sacrifice and service perverted to aggression and vendetta.
For all the justified praise heaped on that generation, I'm not sure they were at heart much different than later ones. Later generations, mine included, became comparatively soft and lax because we could because of the world those grim and determined people helped preserve. When necessity calls, some portion of humanity has always risen to the heights of nobility. Unfortunately, it is the depths of evil that have often provoked these necessities.
Would we have done as much? I don't know. I hope to all the gods we never find out.
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