‘Happy’ Veteran’s Day?

After our Veteran’s Day Parade flag waving and show of love and pride of those who have served their country, after all the metaphorical confetti settled to the ground and had been swept up, I was left with a nagging anxiety that something is wrong with this picture.

I must apologize for raining a little on this parade, but I am in a severe quandary. How do I speak to our national passion for war without upsetting those with that passion? I’ve tried to examine this blind faith in empire and been met with chilling hostility and often by the very people that hate government, big or otherwise. These same patriots that vocally “support the troops” and the billions of dollars it takes and lives lost or ruined trust in the military with frightening totality. Ironically they would be the same people that hate all things government right down to the post office and the park service. This double standard vexes me. In other words, is our government only good at declaring and waging war and nothing else? Why is it that we can strategically destroy a foreign country’s infrastructure and then rebuild it, but our government is somehow incapable of rebuilding our own crumbling infrastructure at home? Here it is considered some sort of hand-out-cum-welfare, but in Afghanistan its nation building.

You see my confusion? God knows we have much to thank our vets for. Make no mistake, I concur, but at what point do we stop and reap the rewards of our strength, their sacrifice, and enjoy peace? Am I the only one that remembers the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of our greatest enemy? Remember when the biggest thing facing W. was stem cell research?  Then nine eleven and the Bush/Cheney years took care of any peace we might have enjoyed. OK. That was almost thirteen years ago yet we still are at war and don’t really know why. We have somehow lost our way, lurching and staggering towards world dominance like a Zombie.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation in January 1961 of the “military/industrial complex”, which then was simply speaking of our growing post WW2 addiction to “the business” of war.  Today that marriage of industry and military has morphed into a vile polygamous union of corporate/finance/congressional/military and all quietly legitimized and promoted by the flower girl of corporate media that completely trumps our democratic/representative government that was formed in 1776. As flawed as the slave owning land barons that wrote our constitution were, that brilliant document they created had the potential to actually represent all citizens and protect individual rights. Sadly, our current crop of criminals in Washington is hard at work neutering it.

Our imperial behavior is nothing new, and in fact is historically common. Empire always over reaches and always ends. Always. We are just the latest model with the only difference being our governance has melded with global corporate influence and is waging war for profit on the environment, as well as “enemies of the state”, putting the very planet we live on in jeopardy.

I had a reader make a snarky comment that I was “seeing black helicopters”, referring to a previous observation of mine that all is not rosy in America. He is not far off. Drones are being deployed over American soil. Modified armored personnel carriers (tanks) are being deployed to civilian police departments and our first amendment rights are being trampled by our corporate congress passing more and more restrictive legislation, making our rights to protest and speak out on wrong doings “against the law”.  In spite of what big brother tells you, whistle blowers are not criminals. As the saying goes,” Sometimes the paranoid are justified in their paranoia.”

I realize I am sort of all over the place here, but everything is connected. The effective propaganda campaign to, “support the troops”, preemptively shuts down anyone even thinking about saying anything to the contrary. (I speak from experience) The passage of Orwellian restrictive laws suppressing free speech coupled with our war based economy and the aforementioned corrupt corporate collusion creates the perfect storm of our ruling Corporatocracy . We still have the illusion of rights such as voting, but our two party system is like a seat on the Titanic. Whichever one you choose, you’re still going down. I am hard pressed to see change coming about any time soon. All that is lacking is the will of the people calling for that change. The Occupy Movement was a start, but was quickly vilified and shut down by said Corporatocracy and I don’t see it coming back with our current stacked deck and love fest with war and warriors.

To all the parade goers and supporters of the troops, I know how good it feels to show love for our military. I know how good it feels to be a part of a large group of like minded people. I know how good it feels to be content in your mind that you are on the right side of God in this love of our military might. I humbly suggest that love is sometimes blind.

Alex lives with his wife, Anna in Key West, Florida. He enjoys writing poetry and prose and making the complacent uncomfortable.