Memorial Day 2011-American Hypocrisy

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.

Colorado

I have taken more than a few trips back to Colorado, where I spent my formative years.  Well, not all that numerous, a few volleyball trips and the once per decade high school reunion trips. 

I went back there again this past week for an IEEE site visit.  Since I am the general chair for the ECCE 2013 conference, I had to go to check out the venues and look at the hotels. It was a boondoggle to beat all boondoggles.  I was wined and dined and I got to stay at a very nice suite in the Hyatt.  It's good to be the king!

Being back in Denver aroused a lot of nostalgia and a mixed bag of feelings both good and bad.  I did not realize just ho wmuch I missed the rockies, until I see them again.  I did not realize just ho wmuch I missed the west, untilIi see the wide open prairies and the wide open ethos of the place.  I did not realize how much I missed the vibrancy of Denver, until I walked the streets of LoDo and Larmer Square.  I suppose I will feel the same way when I eventually make it out to the mountains and hike around the mountains. 

It was pretty amazing to be driven from the Denver International Airport to downtown Denver and I had The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton flowing through my brain: the soundtrack of my youth.  The fashion sense, actually the lack of fashion sense never made an appearance.  So, in my short ride to Denver I relived my seven short years in Denver in my head.  Recalling friends, family, neighbors, and classmates.  It was both emotional and melancholy, recalling those who have left this earth and those who have become lost through the unrelenting march of time.