Here we are again Memorial Day and everyone's stirred up their patriotic feathers, tripping and stumbling over themselves to thank veterans in the most ostentatious, visible way possible.
I really wish we could finally come to some sort of across-the-board agreement in America that we all support the troops. We all have differences with the government.
My hackles get riled up when some ignorant person spouts off that any veteran "gave" me my freedoms. I just wanna ask if they read the same history books and founding documents I did!?!?
I stop these misled people and speak: "say it with me now:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I usually then - if and whenever necessary - ask "what part of 'by their creator' means any veteran who isn't my parent created me??"
It would really be great if we could just grow the hell up and get over the fair-weather patriots and the chest-thumping misled pride of the 'white' man. Whitey did plenty of foul deeds in his day and will reap what he sowed, not the least of which being eventual minority status.
I love my country, I love the land and the water and the sky. I don't trust the government, but they're a damnsite better than the corporations and the moneyaddicts.
I get an ever-increasing bad taste in the back of my mind whenever the boorish overly proud ignoramuses pretend that any sort of dumbed-down redneck lowest common wrasslin'-loving denominator is patriotic. Being dumb is anti-American, and as much as you'd like to hide from this fact, it is ESPECIALLY so if you are being dumb while caucasian.
Digression aside, have a good weekend!
I stand up in salutation of our veterans and the choices they made. I get choked up looking at the flag and thinking about the people who had every right I do to be here living this free life and died instead.
I personally choose to remember everyone who has died in my family, on Memorial Day. I think everybody pretty much does. When I was a kid it was a weekend to make sure that someone in the family had been up to the cemetary and brushed the leaves and grass back and away from the headstones of my grandparents, great aunts and uncles.
That's what all this is for. Thank a veteran for their service, NOT for giving you what your creator did. Perhaps for fighting to protect our way of life, then...
But remember whoever you've lost. That's what it's about. Spend time with everyone else, look back, look forward. Maybe light some fireworks, do some fishing, cook outside.
