Memorial Day: The War-Mongers Drum Circle

Memorial day is not about thanking our soliders and recognizing their sacrifices.  To the contrary, it is a method for the American government, mass media, and consumers of the war narrative to justify the global carnage our military has perpetrated upon people who are brown, poor, and in general do not support the continuance of American economic hegemony.

The way of life Americans have grown accustomed to over the past one hundred years is entirely unsustainable, not just politically, socially, and economically, but ecologically.  Meanwhile, we utilize our military - largely staffed by young men and women who have no chance of finding a job or a way out of their own war zone-like neighborhoods - to make sure that none of these other cultures can mount a sociopolitical offensive capable of causing Americans to actually consider whether or not the lifestyle they enjoy is just.

My father, who recently passed away, was a Vietnam veteran.  He experienced things in that war that haunted his soul for the rest of his relatively short life.  The American war mongers drafted him while he was taking a semester off from college, enjoying life as a young budding radical in Los Angeles, learning about why his upbringing in Oklahoma maybe didn't so much resemble the reality of life in America, but the narrative passed down to him from the war-mongering political elites.  Unfortunately, as he became a man, got married, had a child, and fought in the Vietnam War, getting shot and nearly blown up (schrapnel remained in his legs for the remainder of his life), America only became more militant, more consumerist, more hegemonic.  He suffered from such severe PTSD that he woke up in the middle of the night screaming from nightmares for the much of his life after the war, and in the end he suffered from extreme dementia, thought to be a reaction to the chemical Agent Orange, created by none other than Monsanto, the same company that makes much of the genetically modified corn you most likely eat.

Since the Vietnam War, we have continued to slaughter, only more mercilessly, people all over the world.  On this Memorial Day, we witness not a more humbled, perhaps regretful ethos in the mass media and from the political class, but only more chauvinistic reverence for American hegemony abroad.  I'm glad my father is not here to listen to the soulless, sycophantic propaganda that radiates from the glass boob on this day.

The Occupations in America always feature a large drum circle, often devoid of a beat that doesn't drive you crazy after a few hours, but nevertheless keeps going, like a flame for peace.  Memorial day is nothing but that same drum circle, only not staffed by war-hating young radical hippy anarchists, but millionaires, the ruling elite, and the very same sick people who were there during the Vietnam War, beating those same drums.