Memorial Day is probably the one holiday in the American holiday schedule that exposes the state of American hypocrisy. While all holidays are celebrated by commercial sales, television series marathons and all kinds of commercial reminders to consume massively. Memorial Day is one day where we are supposed to be contemplative and remember the services of those who came before and their sacrifices for the nation and its people.
So we are innundated with meaningless rhetorics and empty promises about how we are honoring those who served in our wars and died in service to the nation. Politicians, national and local, elbow their way to the front of the television lines to profess their love of country and particularly the military. They will piously thunder and weep over the sacrifices and make promises they never keep promising to take care of the vets. They will swear on their bibles and their forebears that their love for the military is second to none, yet their understanding of who makes up the military is limited to how the bright and colorful uniforms can forward their own re-election. Colorful uniforms make great television.
Yet when it comes down to it, we and our politicians, are unadulterated hypocrites. Look around you. Do you see the guys standing on the highway offramps with the cardboard signs, asking for a few bucks? Why are there disproportionately more vets standing and begging? Remember the Walter Reed Hospital scandal? The hospital where we take care of the living veterans, wounded emotionally and physically? Why was it the hospital that had intolerable conditions for the majority of its patients? Why did the Bush administration try to rachet down veteran benefits while we were in Afghanistan and Iraq? What has happened to the veteran benefits? Why did the Obama administration allow the banks foreclose on military families while their loved ones are overseas serving the country? Why aren't we going after those banks, those parasites who depended on government bailouts, for making our soldier's lives so miserable while they are powerless while overseas? Why aren't we taking care of our own.
It does not matter how you feel about the political and military actions ongoing. If Vitenam has taught us anything, it has taught us that the footsoldiers are not the policy makers, they are the implements by which our politicians are able to execute their policies. The men and women put their lives on the line and on hold in order to serve the nation, to defend our lives. All that they ask is to be taken care of, for their families to live in quiet but comfortable anonoymity while they are serving us. They have upheld their end of the bargain, while we have been sadly and glaringly deficient in our end. We have abdicated our duty to them.
Get with it America.
