ENOUGH already

Lately every U.S. holiday, whether it be Memorial Day, Labor Day, or the 4th of July, has been overtaken by “honor those who fought for your freedom” slogans.  The latest and dumbest I’ve heard was “No soldier ever fought for socialism.”

Let’s just drop that last one before it starts making sense to too many people, which it will if it gets repeated often enough.  There’s so much wrong with that statement that it would take another post to rip it apart, and I’m not in the mood.

Well, maybe I am.

Memorial Day is, by definition, militaristic.  What I’m objecting to is the militarization of the rest of the holidays.  Labor Day has become a real dilemma for a lot of wingnuts, but they try to militarize it anyway. I’ve also seen attempts to militarize Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter, for crying out loud.  Everything has to be about the soldiers who fought for our freedom, or else you are so MEAAANNNNN and you are not honoring our SOLDIERS without whom you would not be able to BARBECUE HOT DOGS AND HAMBURGERS TODAY!!!!!!

Next I swear I’ll hear that we should toast the soldiers with champagne on New Year’s Eve…or else we are DISRESPECTFUL OF THOSE WHO MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE.  It’s starting to seem that even if one spent every holiday prostrate in the cemetery, dead tired after having decorated every male’s grave with flags, these people would still not be happy with the person’s Americanism.

Seriously, yes, we should honor our soldiers.  But let’s face it: it’s been almost 70 years since we fought a war that had anything to do with our freedom.

Plus, our soldiers are coming home from our latest police actions to find that there are no jobs and no homes for them.  I don’t call that honoring them.  And yet, most of the people who are shouting the pro-military slogans the loudest at every holiday are the same ones who shout “socialism” the loudest whenever any benefits program is discussed.

They are, in fact, the ones who don’t want to support the soldiers, yet are so fucking grateful for the soldiers’ service.

The simple fact is that the U.S. was never intended to be a militaristic state.  Yet it has become one, with a series of meaningless wars dragging on forever and sucking the life out of our economy…and out of our soldiers.  What we are fighting now is for oil.  Period.  And we ought to be looking beyond it.

Alas, to do so requires science, and most of those shouting about the horrors of socialism also hate science with a passion.  And so we keep sending soldiers off to police actions so we can have more and more oil, until there is no more.

What it is, is rampant conservatism…fear, really…at the expense of our future.

So please…no, no “please”…just drop the militaristic crap.  Look at what’s really happening before you talk.  Don’t use the military as a crutch with which to beat the rest of us over the head just to make yourself feel more holy and correct.  There’s a term for that: pain in the ass.

And the 4th of July is the celebration of a document that declared our independence from a militaristic, corporatist state…England at the time.  Keep that in mind.

Stupid of the Day Award goes to anyone who promotes the “militarize everything” crap.  And have a happy 4th.