A Memorial Day Perspective

A Different Kind Of War


Memorial Day celebrates real people.  Real people who died, real people who remain, real people never known by other real people.  The gravity of that reality can’t be written or stated..and it most certainly can’t be posted. The enormous weight of the count and the cost of those lives is real and it is hard not to see that responsibility as being completely discarded and insulted.  Everyone has ties to our military and varying degrees to the connection of the loss and pain associated with defending a nation.  It is embarrassing to take even the slightest look at what that enormous cost has become.

From whatever side of the fence you stand, take a look at the worst thing you are defending.  And now consider that millions of lives have been either ended or forever changed for your right to defend that.  The soul of America is now The War.  Two giant power brokers are fighting to sit atop the center of the universe.  But in order to do so, they must convince everyone to continue fighting with their neighbor or their sister or themselves. The line that divides is horizontal, it is not vertical.  And essentially every life lost and changed while defending freedom was on the bottom half of that horizontal line.

The only way that a society, collectively living life on the bottom half of that horizontal line, can honor those lost in the pursuit of freedom is to use their combined hands to “push down” that very real horizontal line. To get more for everyone..to expect more from everyone…to relentlessly peruse the disappearance of that horizontal line so everyone stands on top of it.  Instead they “push up” the line and the alleged leaders who spend their days convincing everyone the horizontal line that they see is actually a vertical line that they happen to be on the correct side of.    As the great Ned Beatty said in Shooter,  “there are no Sunni’s and Shiites..there are no Democrats and Republicans…you are either a have or a have-not and there are only so many seats at the table”.  A great way to honor the war dead of this country would be to collectively try to get more seats at the table as opposed to destroying one other talking about the greatness of the few that have been elected to make sure no one never gets a seat.

The diversity of this county relies on all sides being represented.  The foundation of America is an acceptance of independent thought.  By definition, the very concept under which every life was sacrificed defending independence is being destroyed every day….many times by the people thanking them the loudest.  The people in power sent regular people in uniform on to foreign soil to fight for a freedom that is unparalleled anywhere on this planet.  Don’t let the current people in power get away with sending regular people into battle, every day, on common ground.  Diversity is power.  Division disguised as diversity only benefits the “haves” and keeps the “have nots” contained.