Never Forget

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, which is an American holiday in which we ostensibly honor those American soldiers who have died in the line of duty. The idea is that every American soldier who died did so for the freedom we Americans enjoy, so we should take a day out of our busy schedules to remember the fallen and be thankful as we drink and grill literally all of the meat. 

It is a quintessentially American holiday. 

I kinda hate Memorial Day. I hate that I feel obligated to thank active soldiers for their service (yes, I know that's supposed to be for Veteran's Day, but we'll be doing it tomorrow anyway). It's hard for me to think of the fallen and feel like celebrating.

Last weekend, Spokane held its annual Armed Forces Torchlight Parade. I hadn't been to one in years, for a number of reasons. I was usually too depressed to go. I didn't feel like being around crowds. It was too hot. I didn't want to be around family.

A significant portion of this parade consists of a group of veterans driving by in a big truck or a fancy old car and waving to the crowd. Locally-based military units march along, and before each one is an array of flags, which a fairly common sight at any large American gathering.

Of course, this being the 'Land of the Free,' standard practice is to stand whenever the flags pass by. I'm not generally a fan of doing that, either.

This year, I was feeling a bit different. I'm not so depressed. I don't hate my family so much. My younger brother was marching as part of the Mead band, and I literally live along the parade route, so I figured 'what the hell' and went.

I was about 50/50 on whether I stood for the flags in the first half of the parade, mostly because I didn't want to deal with anyone giving me dirty looks. I didn't stand for any in the second half.

I don't know exactly when it started, but the Torchlight parade began a somber tradition several years back. In the middle of the parade line, a group of loved ones quietly carry large pictures of local soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere in recent years).

I stood for that. I needed to. I needed to look at the faces, and the people carrying them. I needed to see the stoic friends. I needed to see the grieving family members, the parents barely keeping it together.

This is the second time I've been present for this ceremony. The first time, years back, there were maybe a couple dozen faces. I lost count this time around.

We stood and applauded, and some of us whistled and cheered and gave thanks. And the faces went by. And they kept going by. I lost the energy to clap, struck by the realization that it wasn't stopping. I looked down Post Street to see how much more were coming, and the posters were all I could see.

I sat and I cried as the last went by. To be honest, I probably cried an unreasonable amount, and continued to do so for the rest of the parade.

Seeing so many who died, people from my home town, was devastating.

It wasn't devastating because there were so many. Not entirely. I wasn't crying because so many had died in the line of duty.

I was crying because so many had died for nothing. Fuck that - less than nothing. Those men and women died so that we could bomb the shit out of places that posed exactly zero threat to the United States all while we instituted a police state at home. Those men and women died so that we could kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, and so we could radicalize countless others.

They died in pursuit of spreading untold human misery while we, the freedom-loving masses of the greatest country god ever put on the face of the earth, did nothing. Fuck that - less than nothing. We sat on our asses as our President and his administration spoon-fed us complete bullshit to justify this prolonged mission of murder and death. We threw thousands of our young into early graves with zero idea as to why, or how long, or what 'victory' was supposed to look like.

We twiddled our thumbs as they installed a system of torture and abuse. We looked the other way as they locked children in an extrajudicial Cuban hell-hole, completely ignoring due process or equal protection under the law, supposed cornerstones of our great democracy.

Because of our pants-shitting terror, we allowed that administration to install a nationwide system of warrantless surveillance, and scores of other neat little loopholes for them to ignore due process of American citizens.

I do not feel particularly proud to be an American. None of us should. We have allowed, through active allowance or passive consent, great and unjustifiable evil to be committed in our name. Every ounce of hatred that the people of the Middle East feels for us has been fully earned on our part (please note I am not saying actions like Manchester are justified - only the anger that fueled it).

That's why I don't like to stand for the flag, or celebrate these various nationalistic holidays where we romanticize and sterilize the reality of the things our country does or has done. That's why I don't say 'thank you for your service' to active duty service members or Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, like they did us a real solid by being thrown into a meat grinder for nothing.

Our dead, and the many, many dead were are responsible for, deserve better than for us to ritually fellate ourselves for the grand achievement of being born where we were. They deserve better than our unquestioning reverence of our well-funded killing machine, or blanket consent to the actions of those who control it.

Those faces that went by in that parade didn't die for our freedom. In point of fact, our freedom has been systematically curtailed while we bicker amongst ourselves about email servers and who the 'real' Americans are. 

Spoiler Alert: We're all real Americans, and we are all complicit.

Don't ever forget that. Don't ever forget what it has cost both for ourselves and for millions of human beings half-way around the world, who live in constant fear of being blown to shit by a drone they can't see, or being shot in the neck in a surprise raid by Navy SEALS.

If we Americans are really so great, then we will do better. We must do better. If we don't, then millions more people will be killed, radicalized, or displaced, and all the bloodshed that results will be on us.